


Trade Mistakes

by Acetate (DramaLama), Chrystie, exuberant_imperfection, kate882, luckypen



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M, Memory Loss, Tumblr Prompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-14 22:49:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 32,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4583085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DramaLama/pseuds/Acetate, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chrystie/pseuds/Chrystie, https://archiveofourown.org/users/exuberant_imperfection/pseuds/exuberant_imperfection, https://archiveofourown.org/users/kate882/pseuds/kate882, https://archiveofourown.org/users/luckypen/pseuds/luckypen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt: Aomine having an accident and losing his memory so all he remembers is being best friends with Tetsu and he doesn’t understand how that could stop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Echo

**Author's Note:**

> http://liamszzaynarchive.tumblr.com/post/97451567202/
> 
> ALSO, quick note: this fic takes place sometime _after_ the first Seirin vs Touou game, but _before_ the second one.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I am your thought but the water's amnesia_   
>  _My name's on the tip of your tongue_   
>  _My image is slipping, but your memory is gripping it_   
>  _This is my breath in your lungs_
> 
> "Echo" by The Hush Sound

Kuroko felt half-asleep as he walked down the street, and he was sure that if he wasn’t following the rest of his team that he’d have no idea where he was going. Several times, his eyes drifted shut and he almost fell over onto Kagami beside him.

Kagami reacted almost by instinct and was prepared to catch him had he not caught himself. “Kuroko? You alright? Did that game wear you out that much?” Kagami moved closer so that Kuroko could lean on him if he needed.

“Every game wears me out,” Kuroko murmured. “But I’m used to it. And we won.” He smiled up at Kagami.

“That’s probably not a good thing. It’s ‘cause you don’t eat enough. You should try getting more than just a vanilla shake everytime we go out.”

Kuroko opened his mouth to reply when his phone started ringing. He pulled it out of his pocket, glanced at the caller ID, and answered. “Hello, Momoi-san.” There was a moment of silence, then what sounded like sniffling. “...Momoi-san, are you alright?”

 _“T-Tetsu-kun! Oh god oh god, Tetsu-kun. I—Dai-chan. Oh god, what do I do Tetsu-kun?! What do I do? Oh god, oh god.”_ She was panting out the words, completely hysterical and barely coherent.

“Calm down. What about Aomine-kun? What happened?” Kuroko asked, masking his worry in the hope that it would reassure Momoi.

 _“Tetsu-kun, I don’t know what—I was there. Why couldn’t I do anything?! Oh god, there was--there was so much blood. Oh god, was it blood? Nonono. It’s Dai-chan. Dai-chan is ok, right Tetsu-kun?! He was just sleeping, right Tetsu-kun??? That’s why he was so still…”_ Her voice grew fainter as she went on, reality and her hysterics blurring together to numb her mind.

Kuroko’s heart froze, blood running cold. He stopped walking. “Wh-what are you—Aomine-kun—is he…? What happened?”

_“...Tetsu-kun? Can you come here? I don’t wanna wait for Dai-chan all alone…”_

“Where? Where are you?” Kuroko asked. He was vaguely aware of Kagami’s concerned gaze on him but he was focused on Momoi’s voice.

Kuroko flinched at the word “hospital”. He assured Momoi he would be there soon and hung up.

Kagami waited for Kuroko to close his phone before asking him. “What’s wrong with Aomine? Is he alright? Is Momoi alright?”

Kuroko stared at his phone, his hand shaking. “I… I don’t know. But Aomine-kun is—is in the hospital,” he said, his voice cracking to a whisper. He turned and started walking to the nearest train station. “I have to go.”

“Wait Kuroko, hold up! I’ll go with you!” Kagami chased after Kuroko and slowed until he was walking at the same pace as him. He may not get along with Aomine, but that didn’t mean he completely hated him.

Kuroko might usually have tried to refuse, but at the moment he didn’t really feel like taking the train alone. “...Thank you, Kagami-kun,” he said, and then continued walking in silence.

* * *

When Kuroko and Kagami arrived at the hospital and asked for Aomine at reception, they were directed to the ICU waiting room, which really didn’t help the anxiety that was building in Kuroko’s chest.

In the waiting room, Kuroko spotted Momoi almost immediately, and headed over to her.

Momoi looked up numbly and offered a weak smile, hunched and broken on a simple chair in the waiting area. “Te-Tetsu-kun.” The smile faltered. “I—Dai-chan… Thank you for coming, Tetsu-kun.” Tears fell silently, retracing tracks already worn into her cheeks. Her eyes were puffy and red, but she didn’t bother to wipe away the fresh tears, knowing more would eventually come.

Kuroko sat down next to her—he was pretty sure he wouldn’t want to be standing when he finally asked, “Momoi-san… what—what happened?”

“Dai-chan fell. And, um, he was bleeding a lot. And I was so scared.” She took a breath, trying to steady her voice and hold back any more hysterics. “The, um, the ambulance came and he—he wasn’t—Dai-chan wasn’t—” She broke off and choked back a sob. “He—he wasn’t moving, Tetsu-kun. I’m so _scared_.” Her voice broke on the last word and she buried her face in Kuroko’s shoulder, her tears soaking the material of his shirt.

Kuroko wanted to know more, _needed_ to know more, but instead he silently put his arms around Momoi and stroked her hair, breathing very carefully to try to keep himself calm for her sake.

Kagami leaned against the wall opposite of where Momoi and Kuroko were sitting, slightly frozen from Momoi’s tears but also stunned at hearing what happened to Aomine. “How did he fall so bad that he went unconscious?” Kagami hoped he was being somewhat gentle.

“Oh _GOD!!!_ It’s all _MY_ fault. Tetsu-kun!!!” Momoi broke out into full-on hysterics again. “Dai-chan will _never_ forgive me!!!”

Kuroko looked at him. “Kagami-kun, I’m sorry, but please stop talking.”

Kagami defensively waved his arms in front of him. “No! I wasn’t—I mean—” He sighed and conceded. “I’m sorry,” he finished and hung his head in defeat.

“I’m sure it wasn’t your fault, Momoi-san,” Kuroko assured softly. “He’ll be okay,” he added, though that was just as much to make himself feel better as it was for Momoi. He fell silent after, unsure of what else to say.

Time passed irregularly. At some point Momoi had stopped crying, but kept her face in place on Kuroko’s shoulder. They stayed like that until a doctor came up to them. “You’re here for Aomine Daiki? You can visit him now.”

Momoi didn’t seem to hear until Kuroko nudged her. “Tetsu-kun, you’re coming too, right?”

“Of course,” he said, standing and holding out a hand to help her up. “Kagami-kun, are you coming?” He glanced over at him.

Kagami nodded and followed them into the room. He figured both Momoi and Kuroko wouldn’t be completely able to handle what they found—even if Kuroko tried to play it off.

“Da-Dai-chan? How are you feeling, Dai-chan?” Momoi took a hesitant step into the room and slowly approached the bed.

“Hmm?” Aomine turned his head toward Satsuki’s voice then winced at the pain. “Ugh. My head hurts like a bitch... Why are you so quiet, Satsuki?”

Momoi stumbled towards the bed, gaze zeroing in on the bandages wound firmly around Aomine’s head. Bumping into the side, she reached up with cold, stiff fingers, too afraid to actually touch him but needing to confirm that he was there and still alive and breathing. “Dai-chan,” she breathed.

“Oi, Satsuki. Stop looking at me like that! You’re weirding me out.” Aomine froze when he noticed someone behind Momoi. “Tetsu!” His face broke into a wide grin at the sight of Kuroko, then he frowned a bit. “Oi, you were gonna sneak up and scare me, weren’t you? Man, that’s just mean, Tetsu.” The smile that had returned to his face belied his words.

Kuroko’s heart skipped a beat—the look on Aomine’s face, that smile… he hadn’t seen that in a long time. He couldn’t help but smile tentatively back, even though he sort of felt like crying. “I don’t think you’re allowed to scare people in hospitals, Aomine-kun. And please don’t ignore Momoi-san. I think she might start crying.”

“Ehh? Why?” Aomine looked back to Momoi and narrowed his eyes. “Do I have to beat somebody up? Who made Satsuki cry?” At that moment, he spotted the other person in the room. “Oi! You! Eyebrows! Was it you? What did you do to her?”

Momoi glanced up, eyes red. “You—” She grasped the hem of her skirt in both hands to keep from punching Aomine in the face. “You idiot! What are you doing picking a fight with Kagamin, you stupid ganguro! Do you even understand how worried everyone was? How worried I was!?”

Aomine looked confused. “Wh… _‘Kagamin’?_ Satsuki, did you get a boyfriend without even telling me? What the hell?” He looked back at the other guy. “So it was you! You broke Satsuki’s heart, didn’t you?”

“Wait, what the hell, Aomine? Do you not know who I am or something? You asshole!” Kagami shouted from his place behind Kuroko.

“Haa??? I think I’d remember meeting someone as stupid-looking as you, Eyebrows,” Aomine said with a snicker.

 _...Oh god._ Kuroko would have laughed if Aomine didn’t seem so _sincere_. “Um, Aomine-kun?” He waited until he had the boy’s attention. “Do you _really_ not remember him?”

“No, I don’t.” Aomine seemed a little offput now, his voice more serious. He looked back and forth between Kuroko and Momoi. “...Should I?”

Momoi watched the exchange with narrowed eyes before turning back around to Aomine. “Kagami Taiga, Seirin’s ace. You played against him in the Inter-High, Dai-chan…”

Aomine looked confused. “Um. No? We haven’t played against a school named Seirin. Right, Tetsu?”

Kuroko’s brow furrowed in worry. “Aomine-kun, what—what grade are we in?”

Aomine laughed a little before he saw how serious Kuroko was. “Um… second year, in middle school. Right? I’m right, aren’t I?” He was starting to feel very uncomfortable now. “What’s happening? Why are you all acting so weird?” He forced another laugh, hoping maybe everyone would start laughing with him and this whole thing would turn out to be a prank and he could get angry and call everyone assholes and everything would be fine.

“Aomine-kun,” Kuroko spoke slowly. “We’re in our first year of high school.”

“...What? When did _that_ happen?!?” Aomine exclaimed. Then his eyes went wide. “Wait. Have I… been in a coma, or something??? Is that why I’m in the hospital? What the hell?”

“Dai-chan... you really don’t remember? You fell earlier today, and hit your head.” Momoi told him, tears starting to fall again as she remembered what happened. “You—we were on the roof, the very top where you always go, and you were on the ladder, and you slipped, and—and—and I wasn’t fast enough to do anything, and you fell.” She was full-out sobbing again and hid her face against Kuroko’s chest, staining his shirt with tears.

Aomine vaguely remembered the sensation of falling, but the memory was blurred, so it felt more like he was recalling a dream… except, instead of ending with him jolting awake in bed, it had ended with him slowly drifting into consciousness in this too-bright hospital room with his head pounding. And to make it worse, Satsuki was crying, and there was that dude who he was apparently supposed to know but he had no fucking clue who he was, and Tetsu was looking at him funny, and he was wearing an ugly hospital dress. It was a shitty day all around. “It uh—it wasn’t… your fault?” He looked to Kuroko for help. Crying Satsuki was not his favorite thing to deal with.

Kuroko recognized that look from when they were in middle school. “Momoi-san, we all know that Aomine-kun is a klutz. Of course it’s not your fault that he fell,” Kuroko said reassuringly, patting her head. Momoi let out a small laugh and the sobbing got a bit less intense, so it seemed to do the trick.

“Oi,” Aomine protested half-heartedly at the insult, but he was more relieved that Satsuki seemed to be calming down a little. ...Then the general sense of confusion returned full-force. “Wait. Why the hell was I on a roof???”

“You were probably sleeping there,” Kuroko said, still trying to calm Momoi down with gentle strokes of her hair.

“...Why would I do that, when I can just sleep in class?” Aomine asked, bewildered.

Momoi finally looked up from Kuroko’s chest. “You, um, said you got tired of teachers yelling at you to wake up,” she said, sniffling a little.

Aomine laughed. “I mean, yeah, that sounds about right, but… even if I said that, I definitely don’t remember deciding that sleeping on the roof was a good idea.”

“Well, you also don’t remember the end of middle school or the start of high school,” Kuroko said with a slight frown. “Aomine-kun, what is the last thing you remember?”

“Oh.” Aomine looked at Tetsu, just looked at him for a moment. Now that he thought about it, Tetsu did look maybe a little taller, a little older… and there was something else about him that was unsettling to Aomine. There was a shadow behind his eyes—and not the usual kind, not the Tetsu kind of shadow. It was something colder. Aomine continued to study his eyes as he continued. “So… you were serious? About the whole… high school thing?”

Kuroko nodded. “Yes. Very serious. You go to Touou High School as a first year,” Kuroko told him.

Aomine sighed and his gaze wandered up towards the ceiling as he tried to remember. Before the vague memory of falling… “Uh. Last I remember… it was summer. Of our second year. And we were…” Aomine nodded and smiled as it started coming back to him. “Yeah, we were all getting ready for the Inter-High, that’s what was happening.”

Kuroko felt a twinge of pain, and hoped that his face didn’t show it. So, right before everything went bad. Aomine still thought of them as best friends. Aomine was still in a time where everything was okay.  Kuroko glanced at Kagami, who was leaning against the wall looking mildly uncomfortable being in this room where he wasn’t part of the conversation. “Kagami-kun, do you think you can get me a drink?” Kagami looked relieved at the chance to leave, and nodded before heading out.

Aomine watched Kagami leave, and once he was gone, he asked, “So… who is that guy, anyway? If he goes to a different school than us, why is he here?”

Momoi and Kuroko exchanged looks, and she was the one to speak up when it looked like Kuroko was hesitant to do so. “Kagamin and Tetsu-kun go to the same school. They go to Seirin. You and I go to Touou,” she said slowly.

Aomine looked back and forth between Momoi and Tetsu, his mouth opening and closing, but no words coming out. He… wasn’t really sure what to say. Why the _hell_ would he and Tetsu go to different schools? What… what could possibly have happened? “...Did… did you move, or something? Did I move? What…?” He began to feel a little light-headed.

Kuroko didn’t want to deal with this. He didn’t want to have to explain to Aomine that they weren’t friends anymore. He didn’t want to have to relive all of that again. And he knew this Aomine. The one who was still his best friend, and who didn’t look down on him yet. This Aomine would be crushed to find out that they weren’t friends anymore. He didn’t want to do that to him. “I should... I should go. And you should rest, Aomine-kun.” Kuroko forced a small smile, and turned to walk towards the door.

Aomine reached a hand out “W-wait, don’t… Tetsu...” he said weakly, suddenly unable to keep himself upright anymore. He laid his head back down on the pillow. “...Stay,” he mumbled as his eyes drifted shut.

“You’re really not going to stay, Tetsu-kun?” Momoi asked.

Kuroko shook his head. “He won’t want me here when he starts to remember things,” he told her before walking out of the room to go find Kagami.


	2. Used To

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _At least there's you_   
>  _And at least there's me_   
>  _Can we get this back?_   
>  _Can we get this back to how it used to be?_
> 
> "Used To" by Chris Daughtry

Kuroko just wanted to sleep. That was all. It wasn’t too much to ask for. He’d had a long day, what with playing a game and then dealing with Aomine. He deserved sleep.

Whoever was texting him seemed to disagree. His phone had been buzzing at least every other minute for the past hour. He’d been ignoring it, in the hopes that whoever it was would give up, but it didn’t stop. Eventually, he relented and picked up his phone, squinting at the bright light that invaded his vision when the screen came to life under his fingers to display his messages.  

_yo tetsu whats up_

_heyyyyy tetsu im bored_

_did you know i can hold my breath for 72 seconds_

_...i shouldnt have done that now im dizzy_

_hospital beds are shitty_

_so is hospital food_

_but the nurses are hot ;)_

_satsuki says I smell! tetsu do I smell???_

_oi! answer!!! tetsu!! i do NOT smell_

Kuroko could feel a headache coming on. More messages were coming in as he read the ones Aomine had already sent. Clearly he still didn’t remember that they weren’t friends anymore.

_u know what Tetsu_

_i bet U smell_

_i bet that’s why you won’t answer_

_...will u come visit me if I take that back?_

_tetsu im loneeellllyyyyyyyy_

_bring me teriyaki burgers_

_u can get a milkshake_

_and mai-chan. bring me her photobooks._

_the doctors are too uptight here. i bet they dont see enough boobs._

Kuroko quickly texted back to stop that from going any further. _Aomine-kun. Please let me sleep._ He sent back before putting down his phone, hoping that he could finally get some rest.

Aomine sent one last message. _i wanna play basketball with you tetsu._

Kuroko could feel the tears gathering in his eyes, and he didn’t know how to reply to that. He certainly wasn’t going to sleep now. Kuroko lay in bed, staring at his ceiling, trying and failing to keep the tears from falling.

_u better pass to me a lot for ignoring me bastard_

Kuroko let out a noise that was half-laugh and half-sob. What was he supposed to do with this? He didn’t know, so he just didn’t do anything and tried to push it out of his mind.

* * *

Aomine didn’t really care that Tetsu wasn’t responding to him much. He’d never been much of a texting person, so Aomine had long since gotten used to bombarding his phone without response. When he got out of the hospital, he still had a few days before he was supposed to go back to school, and absolutely nothing to do. And when he had nothing to do, his first resort was usually Tetsu.

_hey wanna grab some food when u get out of school?_

_I have plans with Kagami-kun. Maybe some other time._

_ditch eyebrows. lets get food. ill buy u a shake_

_It would be rude to cancel on such short notice._

Aomine sighed, sent one last text, then tossed his phone aside and lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling.

_fine fine. tomorrow then. ill still buy u a shake i guess. but just cuz its u_

“You okay?” Kagami asked, glancing at Kuroko as his friend pulled out his phone.

“I’m fine,” Kuroko lied, putting the phone in his pocket. Maybe he should just stop looking at the text. Turn off his phone until everything was back to normal. That would hurt less.

The next day Aomine texted Tetsu again.

_hey u ready for that shake??? bc im ready for burgers_

_I can’t right now. There’s a quiz tomorrow. I need to study._

_cmon tetsu. stop being boringggg. we can get ice cream then play basketball. the place near teikou is still open right?_

“Kagami-kun, don’t let me look at this anymore, please.” Kuroko turned his phone off and handed it to him.

Kagami looked at him with concern, but said nothing and pocketed the phone.

Aomine continued texting Kuroko but got no response. All he wanted was to see his best friend. Why was that so bad?

* * *

Aomine texted Tetsu multiple times every day for almost a week, but kept being ignored or brushed off, so he started texting him less often. He hadn’t even sent a single message today yet, and now it was almost nighttime and he was lying on his bed staring at his phone, trying to decide whether he should try. He wrote and erased the beginning of a text to Tetsu several times, before sighing in frustration, shoving his phone into his pocket and getting up.

Almost by instinct, he headed to his window, throwing it open and shouting obnoxiously, “Oi, Satsuki!” several times. Then he settled down on the pillows and blankets piled right beneath the windowsill, and waited.

Momoi opened up her window, and smiled at Aomine. “Dai-chan!” she greeted cheerfully, settling into her own pillow and blanket cocoon. Then she got a look at his face. “Is something wrong?”

Aomine looked away with a frown. After a moment, he just said simply, “Tetsu.”

“Is something wrong with Tetsu-kun?” Momoi asked, worry crossing her features.

His brows knitted in frustration. “Yeah. He won’t talk to me.”

Her mouth formed a small o shape. She couldn’t say she was surprised, but she didn’t like to see Aomine upset either. “I’m sure he’s just busy. High school is a lot more work than middle school, and he’s got practice, and Kagamin.”

“That’s bullshit! Me and Tetsu are best friends! Why should any of that stuff even matter?” he argued. Then, after a moment of thought, he remembered who “Kagamin” was and added, “And what the hell do you mean about Eyebrows?”

Momoi hesitated before answering. “Just... well, they play basketball together now. So, he takes up some of Tetsu-kun’s time. That’s all,” she told him.

Aomine felt his irritation swell, but before he could speak again, it drained away, and he was just left with a hollow feeling. “So… so what? He doesn’t have time for me anymore?” he said. It came out sounding sadder than he’d meant it to, so he tried to lighten it up with a laugh at the end, but that just sort of made it worse.

Momoi felt her heart break a little bit, and resolved to call Kuroko when she was done talking to Aomine. “Oh, Dai-chan... no, I’m sure that’s not true. He’s probably just busy right now. I’m sure that he’ll talk to you this weekend when he doesn’t have any classes.”

Aomine paused for a moment, and then laughed again. “What do you mean, ‘I’m sure’? Why don’t you _know_? You always know things, _especially_ when they have to do with Tetsu! ...Why does it sound like he never talks to you, either?” he asked.

Momoi had to think out her reply. She didn’t want to lie to Aomine, but she and Kuroko didn’t really talk all that much. They exchanged emails every now and then, but that was about it, and she got the feeling he was just humoring her with those because none of their middle school friends still talked to each other any more. “I talk to him, just not as much. Like I said, high school is busier than middle school, Dai-chan.”

“Yeah, well…” he crossed his arms and scowled. “That’s stupid. High school is stupid, and Eyebrows is nothing special I’m sure, and if Tetsu really wanted to, he’d…” _If he wanted to see me, he’d text me back._ “I—I miss Tetsu, Satsuki! Why won’t he talk to me?!”

“I...” She didn’t know what to do, and it hurt her to see her friend so upset. “Just give him until this weekend. If he still doesn’t talk to you, we’ll go to his school to find out what’s going on. Okay?” She would make damn sure that Kuroko talked to Aomine. She wasn’t sure why he hadn’t just told Aomine that they weren’t friends anymore, but she would respect his decision to not tell him. But if Kuroko wasn’t going to tell him, then he couldn’t just leave Aomine wondering what was happening.

Aomine looked up and her, opening and closing his mouth a few times before he finally shrugged and said, “...Yeah, okay. I guess.” Then a small half-smile pulled at the corner of his mouth and he said quietly, “Thanks, Satsuki.”

* * *

Kuroko picked up his phone when he saw that Momoi was calling him. “Momoi-san? Is Aomine-kun alright?” he asked, immediately assuming that something must be wrong, considering the last time she called him it was to tell him that Aomine was in the hospital.

“Oh, yes, he’s fine!” Momoi answered quickly at the hint of alarm in Kuroko’s voice. Then she remembered why she was calling, and continued, “...But also, no. He’s kinda not?”

Kuroko’s brows furrowed at that. “What do you mean?”

Momoi took a deep breath, thought for a moment about how she was going to phrase this, and then said, “You really, really need to talk to him. And not just a talk with him. I mean, be his friend.” She paused and sighed. “It doesn’t have to be like how it used to be. I know it… it wouldn’t be fair to ask that of you, Tetsu-kun. But… he’s really, really unhappy. He… he needs you.”

Kuroko looked down at his shoes, trying to think about how to answer. A small bitter part of him thought that that was exactly how he’d felt when Aomine had stopped talking to him, but overall he was just more worried about Aomine. He knew he couldn’t act like everything was fine, because it wasn’t, and Aomine would notice… but then, he supposed it didn’t really matter, because Aomine clearly already had noticed. “Alright,” he eventually said.

A wide smile of relief crossed Momoi’s face. “Thank you, Tetsu-kun!!! I promise I’ll tell him to behave himself,” she said, mostly joking. But after a moment, she added seriously, “He can’t get too worked up, he’s still recovering from… you know. The head trauma and stuff. But!” She perked up and said more cheerily, “I’m sure that having you around more will help him a lot.”

“Does he remember anything yet?” Kuroko asked her curiously.

“Hmm… oh!” Momoi giggled as she remembered. “Earlier this week, we were walking, and a dog barked at us, and he suddenly asked if he’d ever played one-on-one with a dog, because he sort of remembered doing that. But that’s about it.”

Kuroko sounded mildly amused as he replied, “Interesting. I didn’t know there were any other dogs that liked basketball besides Nigou, and I’m pretty sure he picked that up from watching my team play. But it’s good to know that he’s starting to remember things.”  

Momoi hummed in agreement. After a few more minutes of small talk, the silences between topics grew longer, and soon Momoi said, “Well, Tetsu-kun, hopefully I’ll see you around more, soon!”

“Of course, Momoi-san. It was nice talking to you,” he said politely before hanging up.


	3. Hairline Fracture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _We're broken but still breathing_   
>  _We are wounded, but we are healing_   
>  _We pick up right where we left off_   
>  _Breathe on the ashes that remain_
> 
> "Hairline Fracture" by Rise Against

_Aomine-kun, would you like to get something to eat with me? I’m craving a milkshake. We can play some basketball first if you would like._ Kuroko texted to Aomine the next day.

Aomine had to read the text twice for it to sink in, but when it did, his face lit up. He replied almost immediately. _yeah!!! lets get food first tho, im starving. meet u at maji in half an hour?_

 _Alright._ Kuroko said simply, putting his phone away and leaving his house to start in the direction of Maji Burger.

Aomine walked into Maji Burger forty-five minutes later (which was practically early for him), scanned the restaurant once, and his eyes zeroed in on Kuroko sitting at a table near the window—not the table where they usually sat, that one was taken. As Aomine approached, he smirked when he saw Kuroko side-eying the people who had sat there, a vague hint of homicide in his eyes. ...His smirk faded as he noticed that it wasn’t just irritation in Kuroko’s eyes. He also looked sad for some reason. But then Kuroko seemed to notice him and instantly covered up the sadness, offering Aomine a small smile.

“Hello, Aomine-kun,” he called.

“Yo, Tetsu,” he greeted. “Wanna go order?”

Kuroko nodded and got to his feet, casting one last resentful glance at the unaware family sitting at their table, before joining Aomine at the counter. “One vanilla shake please,” he said, but the worker didn’t seem to notice, looking instead at Aomine for an order.

Aomine listed off his usual order, then added at the end, “...and a vanilla milkshake.” Just a few minutes later, they were seated back at the table, Aomine with his tray full of burgers, and Tetsu with his milkshake. As usual, Aomine slid one burger across the table to Tetsu, and then started eating his own.

“Thank you, Aomine-kun,” Kuroko said, both for the milkshake and the burger, which he never actually wanted when he came here, but always got anyway because of either Aomine or Kagami. He didn’t even really like burgers, but he appreciated the sentiment.

Aomine shrugged in response, busily devouring his first burger in three bites. After a moment, he grinned and said, “Well, I was kinda hoping that after—however much time it’s apparently been?—you would’ve started ordering _actual food_ from here but I guess that’s not ever gonna change, huh?” He laughed a little.

Kuroko smiled faintly at him. “No, I suppose not. But actual food seems to be shoved upon me regardless. I really would be fine with just my milkshake though.”

Aomine ate a few more burgers in peaceful silence, concentrating on nothing but the food... then paused as thoughts began to intrude. One question in particular nagged at him repeatedly. “So, uh…” He picked up another burger and tried to keep his tone as casual as possible. “What made you decide you did want to talk to me, after all?”

Kuroko considered making something up, but then decided that he could be honest about this part. “Momoi-san told me that I was making you sad. I didn’t want to do that.”

Aomine felt his face begin to flush. “Wha—I wasn’t—I mean—uh…” He ran a hand through his hair. “God _dammit_ , Satsuki,” he muttered under his breath.

Kuroko smiled a little sympathetically at him. “Sorry. I’m sure you didn’t want her to do that.”

 _Well, it’s been done, hasn’t it?_ Aomine thought, slumping against the back of the chair in defeat. “I… well… yeah. It’s true though, I guess.” He looked down at the table and fiddled absentmindedly with one of the discarded burger wrappers as he continued. “I… don’t know what the past couple of years have been like. What’s happened. So, as far as I know, barely two weeks ago, you were my best friend, and then you just stopped talking to me, and I had… I _still_ have no idea why." 

Kuroko looked down at his milkshake, starting to feel a bit guilty. He’d mostly been thinking about how much it would hurt to lose Aomine again when he was ignoring him. He hadn’t thought as much about how much it must be hurting Aomine, who wasn’t used to them not talking. “Things have changed a bit since middle school, but I’d rather not talk about it. I think I heard that it’s better for people in your condition to remember things on their own.” Which, was true, but he also just didn’t want to talk about their falling out.

The pressing desire to _know_ , to just hurry up and regain all his memories, was still curled tight in Aomine’s chest. But he also very much wanted Tetsu to be alright with spending time with him, because he clearly couldn’t handle the alternative. So he just nodded in reply. “Yeah, you’re probably right. I… won’t ask, anymore.” He paused, then finally looked back up at Tetsu. “So… are we okay?”

Not really, but Kuroko smiled and nodded anyway, because they would have to be for now. And then everything would go back to normal when Aomine remembered things, and it would hurt like hell, but for now they had to be okay for Aomine’s sake. “Of course. And I think today’s going to be the day I finally win at one-on-one. I’ve learned a few new moves since middle school,” he said, forcing himself to sound normal.

Aomine didn’t realize how tense he had been until Tetsu’s affirmation sent a wave of relief through him. He grinned. “Oh yeah? Bring it on!” He started imagining all the possible ways Tetsu could have improved in the years his memory was missing, and he just couldn’t stop smiling. “Oh _man_ I’m looking forward to this!!!” he exclaimed excitedly, holding out a fist towards Tetsu.

Kuroko froze for a moment, looking at the fist extended towards him. His smile became a bit dimmer, but he wouldn’t let himself break in front of Aomine, so he held out his fist and bumped it against Aomine’s. “Then you’re going to have to eat faster if you want to have time to play before it gets dark, since you showed up late.”

“Oi,” Aomine said indignantly. (He still couldn’t completely wipe the smile off of his face.) “I was only fifteen minutes late this time, jerk!” Even as he spoke, though, he grabbed another burger and wolfed it down. There was no _way_ he was gonna miss out on this one-on-one with Tetsu.

* * *

Kuroko stopped just in front of the hoop after performing his new drive. “I still can’t really shoot,” he said sheepishly. “Can we count that as a point in my favor since I got past you and would have made a point if I could get a ball through a hoop?”

Aomine gaped. “Wh-what _was_ that???” He hadn’t experienced Tetsu disappearing on him like that in a while—he’d gotten pretty good at spotting him.

Kuroko had created the move to defeat Aomine, but he hadn’t been planning to use it like this. “My team has started calling it a vanishing drive,” Kuroko told him.

“That’s _awesome!_ No one’ll ever see it coming!” Aomine said excitedly, holding a hand out for the ball. “When’d you come up with it?”

Kuroko briefly wondered if this is what it would have been like if he and Aomine had stayed partners. If he would have gotten to see this excitement every time he started trying to develop something new. He quickly pushed the thought away. “Very recently. I got the idea after playing your team,” Kuroko said, tossing the ball back to him.

Aomine’s smile faded a bit and he stared at the ball in his hands. “Oh, right. We’re… on different teams.” He dribbled the ball a few times. “That’s… weird.” _More than just weird,_ Aomine thought. It was probably the most troubling discrepancy between his memories and his current reality, the most concrete proof that whatever had happened to them had significantly affected their relationship somehow. Because Aomine absolutely could not remember ever even _considering_ going to a different school than Tetsu, and he didn’t really want to think about what might’ve changed that.

Kuroko hummed in agreement, but decided to change the subject. “I have one other new move, but I need you for it. It’s a pass,” Kuroko said to distract Aomine.

Tetsu’s words pulled him back out of his mind. _“I need you.”_ Those ones in particular struck him, and Tetsu was looking at _him_ and no one else, and it felt _right_. He’d been floating through an unfamiliar world since he’d woken up in the hospital, whereas this… this felt like home. The doubtful thoughts fell away as he anchored himself in the familiarity of _Tetsu_ , and he smiled, passing the ball back and jogging down the court with a hand ready to catch the pass.

Ignite Pass Kai was something that Kuroko had practiced a bit more, so he felt more sure of himself as he launched the ball across the court to Aomine than he had doing the drive. And it was a bittersweet feeling to be passing to Aomine again, something that he hadn’t done in so long, but he mostly tried to focus on the sweet part.

Seeing the intensity Tetsu seemed to be putting into the pass, Aomine dropped the smile and focused seriously on the ball. He caught it solidly in his right hand—and then promptly transferred it to his left, because, “ _DAMN_ , Tetsu, that hurt!” He shook his hand and blew on it, trying to relieve the pain. “I mean, that was so _cool_ , but also, OW,” he said with an exhilarated laugh.

Kuroko jogged over with a concerned expression. “Are you okay?” he asked, taking Aomine’s hand in his to look it over and make sure everything was alright. Maybe he had passed too hard.

His heartbeat was spiking and his face was warm, but definitely only because they’d been playing. Yeah. And his face definitely wasn’t turning as red as his hand currently was. ...Yeah, definitely not. “Uhh…” He laughed nervously. “Yeah, I’m fine! Look, no blood!” He gulped and tried to think of something else to say, because when he wasn’t talking, he was thinking about how close Tetsu was.

“That shouldn’t be a way to judge if you’re okay or not,” Kuroko reprimanded, but let go of Aomine’s hand anyway. “Are you sure it’s alright?” he asked, just to make sure.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Aomine assured him, then grinned. “Ready to go again?”

“I don’t know. I think I’m winning since you didn’t say that we weren’t counting getting past you as a point,” Kuroko teased lightly.

“Pffft, and why do you wanna win so bad, huh? Are we betting something on this?” Aomine said with a smirk and a raised eyebrow.

“Not that I was aware, but I’m willing to do so if you have something you want to bet,” Kuroko replied. 

“How about… loser buys ice cream?” Aomine suggested.

“Can getting past you still count as points?” Kuroko asked. He was probably going to lose anyway, but he was certainly going to try.

“Sounds fair to me,” Aomine agreed, and began dribbling the ball. “Ready?”

Kuroko nodded and positioned himself to defend the goal.

* * *

Kuroko and Aomine had gone to the carnival in town together, and Kuroko might have looked too long at one of the large stuffed animals that looked a lot like Nigou because Aomine seemed to notice.

“...You like that one, huh?” Aomine said with a sly grin. He grabbed Tetsu’s hand and led him over to the stall where the large stuffed dog was. “I can definitely get it for you!”

“What? Aomine-kun, you really don’t need—”

“But I want to! C’mon, Tetsu, it’ll be fun!”

Kuroko wasn’t even sure what he would do with a stuffed animal that large. It was almost as big as him. But he could see it in Aomine’s eyes. He recognized that look. He was getting the stupid stuffed animal whether he wanted it or not. So, he silently followed Aomine to the booth.

There was a fair amount of swearing and accusations of “This shit is totally rigged!” on Aomine’s part, but several minutes and one surly carnival worker later, Aomine was handing the giant stuffed animal to Tetsu with a big grin. Then he suddenly noticed another giant stuffed animal that looked similar to that one, just a few booths away, and ran off towards it, calling over his shoulder. “I’m gonna get you another one, Tetsu!”

“Wait! Aomine-kun!” Kuroko looked helplessly at Aomine’s back as he ran off towards the booth. Kuroko could barely see while holding this one off the ground. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with another one. He sighed in resignation and followed Aomine.

Nearly an hour later, Aomine was holding several large stuffed animals and finally beginning to feel some inkling of regret. Beside him, Tetsu appeared to be a walking mound of cute fluffy things instead of a person. “So, uh… You wanna drop these off at your place and go get some food?”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Kuroko replied around a teddy bear’s arm. He really didn’t begin to know what he was supposed to do with all of these. But there sure were a lot of angry carnival merchants now.

“Okay cool, because I think they might kick us out pretty soon anyway,” Aomine said, nervously eying all the workers at the booths he had conquered as they passed by them on the way out.

 

Kuroko dropped his pile of stuffed creatures onto his bed when they reached his room, hair resembling his bedhead when he emerged from the stuffed animal mountain he’d been carrying.

Aomine dropped the few stuffed animals he was holding beside the other pile on the bed. Aomine snickered and pointed at Tetsu’s head. “Isn’t it a little late in the day to have bedhead?” he teased, ruffling his hair.

Kuroko ducked and batted at Aomine’s hand. “Well, you’re making it worse,” he replied, trying in vain to fix it.

“Well _you’re_ not doing a much better job of it,” Aomine said, still laughing. “Here, let me try.” He reached out a hand and tried to smooth out the biggest spike of hair jutting out above Tetsu’s forehead.

If it had been anyone else, Kuroko would have told them to stop. He actually probably would have told them to leave. But it was Aomine. And he froze, unsure what to do before unconsciously leaning into the touch like he would have during one of their middle school training camps when Aomine would laugh at his bedhead and try to fix it. He should have told Aomine to stop. That would have been the smart thing to do, but he let him try anyway.

Aomine frowned at Tetsu’s hair in frustration. “Wow, it’s even worse than usual. It practically has a life of its own.” He stepped closer and brought up his other hand to help hold down more hair. “Stop that,” he muttered at one particularly stubborn bit, and began to comb his fingers through the section of hair until it laid a little flatter… and maybe he continued for a few seconds extra, because Tetsu’s hair was really soft. It was much nicer to touch than the fur of any of the stuffed animals laying on the bed.

“I … I think I should probably walk Nigou,” Kuroko said eventually, because he needed this to stop.

“Haah?” Aomine took his hands off of Tetsu’s head so he could see his face. “Who the hell is Nigou?”

At the sound of his name, the small dog came running into the room and wagged his tail at the two of them. “That is Nigou,” Kuroko said, pointing at the dog.

“Wh—AH!” Aomine’s question turned into a shout of surprise as he followed Tetsu’s finger to see the dog. Once he got over his shock, though, he grinned and crouched down, holding his hand out towards Nigou. “Hey there. You’re pretty cute, huh?” The dog sniffed his hand, and Aomine went to give him a scratch behind the ears. “Hey… he totally has your eyes, Tetsu!” he realized, looking between Tetsu and Nigou with a laugh.

“That’s why my team named him Tetsuya #2,” Kuroko replied, watching Aomine interact with his dog with a small smile. “He seems to like you. Although, he seems to like everyone. Even Kagami-kun, and Kagami-kun is afraid of him.”

It took Aomine a second to put a face to the name “Kagami”, but when he did, he laughed. “Eyebrows is afraid of a cute little puppy? That’s hilarious!”

“I think he’s just afraid of dogs in general,” Kuroko said, crouching down to pet his dog, who flopped onto his back to get his belly rubbed by the two.

“Pffft sucks for him,” Aomine said, giving Nigou’s belly a few pats and then standing up. “So, we going on a walk, then?”

Nigou’s ears perked up at the word ‘walk’, and he jumped to his feet with a bark, wagging his tail back and forth, and jumping excitedly around Aomine. “Yes, let’s go.”

Soon they were strolling down the street, Nigou running in front of them and excitedly sniffing everything, and the sunset tinting the world orange. It had been a warm day for autumn, so when they passed by a convenience store, they bought ice cream to eat as they walked. When Aomine finished his several minutes later, he looked at the stick and sighed in disappointment as he saw “loser” written on it. Then, suddenly, images began to flash before his eyes, from a very similar evening, walking home with Tetsu at sunset, eating ice cream, and… Aomine’s eyes widened. “W-why the hell did you shove ice cream down my back?” he exclaimed out of nowhere, shuddering as he remembered the unpleasant sensation.

Kuroko’s eyes widened and he almost dropped his own ice cream. “I—what? You remember that?” Kuroko asked, stopping in his tracks, causing Nigou to whine at him.

“I just did, just now,” he said, still squirming slightly as he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had just dumped cold water down his back. After a moment, he realized Tetsu had stopped walking, and turned to face him. “I can’t believe you would waste perfectly good ice cream like that…” he said, starting in a joking tone and drifting off slightly as he noticed the look on Tetsu’s face.

So. Aomine didn’t remember why he had done that then. He still had no idea what had happened between them. Kuroko forced a smile for Aomine. “You were being a bit of a jerk. You totally deserved it,” he declared, starting to walk again.

Aomine could tell that something was off, and thought about asking for more details, since he was _clearly_ missing some crucial ones, but… he had promised not to pry about middle school. Not to mention, he much preferred Tetsu’s real smile to the one he was currently faking. So instead, he said jokingly, “...Okay, but did the _ice cream_ deserve it?”

“Probably not. Your sweater certainly didn’t. Your mom got mad at me for staining it blue.” Kuroko replied.

“My mom? Mad at _you?_ I don’t think I believe that,” Aomine said. “She loves you! Possibly more than she loves me,” he added with mock-bitterness.

“You’re right. She wasn’t mad. She just asked me to not do it again and if I wanted anything to eat,” Kuroko replied.  
  
Aomine sighed dramatically and replied with some sort of teasing comment, and conversation went back to normal. But the newly-gained memory sat ominously in the back of Aomine’s mind, almost taunting him with all the things he’s _hadn’t_ yet remembered.


	4. Gravity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Something always brings me back to you_   
>  _It never takes too long_
> 
> _I never wanted anything so much_   
>  _Than to drown in your love and not feel your rain_
> 
> -"Gravity" by Sara Bareilles

Kuroko hadn’t been to Aomine’s house in a long time, so he wasn’t sure what to expect when he knocked on the door.

Aomine may or may not have been pacing near the door for the past fifteen minutes, waiting for Tetsu’s arrival. So when he heard Tetsu knock at the door, he answered it in seconds. “...Yo, Tetsu,” he greeted casually, opening the door and gesturing for him to come in.

“Hello, Aomine-kun,” Kuroko said, stepping inside and looking around. It looked pretty much like he remembered it, except with a few more pictures. There were still a few of him and Aomine and the two of them with Momoi, and one with the whole team. But then there was also one of Aomine’s new team, and a few of the family that Kuroko hadn’t seen.

“You hungry? I am,” Aomine said, leading Tetsu down the hall. “Mom, do we have any good food in the house?” he called as they entered the kitchen.

“Hello, Aomine-san,” Kuroko said with a polite smile.

Aomine’s mom turned around with a quizzical look. “Daiki, who is—” Her eyes widened as she recognized Kuroko, and she nearly dropped the glass she was holding in her haste to set it down. “TETSU-CHAN!” she exclaimed happily, rushing towards him to give him a hug. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen you here!”

Kuroko’s eyes widened a bit in surprise, but he wrapped his arms around her as well to return the hug. “It’s nice to see you again as well,” he said sincerely.

Aomine side-stepped to avoid being caught in the crossfire, and went to open the fridge and grab a soda. “You see?” he deadpanned. “This is what I was talking about. Ever since the first time you came over, she’s loved you more than me!”

“Well, maybe if you were less of a little brat…” his mom said, pulling away from Kuroko and poking Aomine in the side roughly and going back to what she had been doing. “You know, Tetsu-chan,” she said conversationally, ignoring Aomine’s whining. “I would have never guessed it was _you_ coming over. The way Daiki was pacing in front of the door, I thought he was having a girl over.”

Aomine eyes widened in horror and he was beet-red in seconds, glancing nervously at Tetsu and then back to his mother. “What—I was _not_ —why would I—” She started laughing at him, and he frowned. “Mom, _stoooop_.”

Kuroko was blushing as well, but managed to keep a straight face. “Perhaps I should stay here with Aomine-kun’s mother. It might be safer, it appears,” he said neutrally.

“You—you stop it too!” Aomine snapped, but his anger lost its edge when he turned to Tetsu and saw that his face was also red. He turned away and went back to the fridge, looking for a drink for Tetsu.

“You should, Tetsu-chan! We have a lot to catch up on!” Aomine’s mother said cheerily, completely unperturbed by—perhaps even savoring—the awkwardness in the air.

Aomine, having found a bottle of Pocari, closed the fridge and gave his mom a strange look. “How much could you possibly have to catch up on, he was just here a couple of—” He froze and averted his gaze sheepishly. “—weeks… ago…” he ended weakly. He walked over to Tetsu and handed him the drink, not quite meeting his gaze.

“Thank you, Aomine-kun,” Kuroko said, taking the drink, and not meeting anyone’s eyes.

Aomine’s mother glanced between the two of them worriedly—she still vividly remembered the day Daiki had come home alone, yet again, and she’d asked him _“Where’s Tetsu-chan? I haven’t seen him in months!”_ Unexpectedly, Daiki had suddenly snapped, _“We’re not friends anymore, okay? Stop bringing it up!”_ And he had never been quite the same after that—until now, with his amnesiac self acting like he had climbed into a time capsule two years ago and only just now emerged.

But now was clearly not the time to press that issue, she figured as she looked between them. “So, you boys hungry, then? I was just starting dinner,” she said casually into the awkward silence.

“Starving!” Aomine exclaimed right away, thankful for the subject change.

“I always have room for your cooking, Aomine-san,” Kuroko said with a small smile.

Aomine’s mother smiled brightly at him. “Glad to hear that, Tetsu-chan!”

Aomine side-eyed Tetsu. “Suck-up,” he muttered.

“No. Your mother just happens to be a good cook. Which is good because she is like a second mother to me, and my first mother cannot cook as well,” Kuroko replied.

“Oh, Tetsu-chan, that’s so sweet~”

Aomine rolled his eyes. “Well yeah, you’re right, I guess, but you—”

His mother interrupted him. “Daiki! How kind of you to volunteer to help! You can start the rice cooker and set the table.”

Aomine groaned. “Fiiine.”

* * *

Later, after dinner, Aomine was lying on his bed, absentmindedly fiddling with a basketball. He and Tetsu were just hanging out in his room, and conversation was a bit sparse, but Aomine couldn’t quite rid his face of a small, content smile. He turned to Tetsu to say something after a short period of silence. “Hey Tetsu—” Then suddenly something shifted—he wasn’t sure whether it had been the movement of his head or the sight of Tetsu’s face, but something triggered a series of images in his head. He stared at the wall with a vague smile on his face as the memory washed over him.

Kuroko looked at Aomine curiously when he didn’t finish what he was saying and instead adopted a rather stoned-looking smile. “Aomine-kun, are you okay?” Kuroko asked with mild concern.

In his mind, Aomine saw Tetsu very close to him. It was dark, and they were both lying down on a bed, facing each other. Sometimes they talked, sometimes they laughed… sometimes they just smiled, barely able to see their faces in the dark but still exchanging countless words through the silence. It was a warm, comfortable memory—it felt like a favorite fluffy blanket wrapped around him, its softness too enticing for him to want to consider getting up. He vaguely heard present-Tetsu’s voice, but the only response he could manage was, “Um....”

Kuroko gently shook him. “Aomine-kun? Did you... did you remember something?”

The touch was what finally brought him back to reality. He blinked several times until everything came back into focus, and his gaze settled on Tetsu. His smile had faded upon being shaken from the memory, but it came back full-force as he registered Tetsu’s question. “...Yeah,” he said quietly. He rolled over onto his back and stared thoughtfully at the ceiling. “It was just like right now. Except it was a lot later, so you were probably sleeping over. And… well…” He couldn’t quite find the words to explain the memory, so he just ended simply with, “It was really nice.”

Kuroko found himself smiling back at Aomine, despite not intending to do that. “Sounds like it could have been any one of our sleepovers really, but I’m glad that you’re remembering things,” he said.

Aomine hummed in agreement. Then after a moment, he grinned and asked, “Hey, you wanna sleep over tonight?”

Kuroko faltered slightly at that, but then forced another smile. “Um, sure, if my parents say it’s okay.”

“Awesome!” Aomine said, sitting up excitedly. “You can call your parents, and I’ll go make some popcorn, and we can watch a movie or something! I don’t remember seeing half of the movies I own, so we have lots of options!” He went to exit the room, almost running, but then paused in the doorway and looked back. “Oh, hey, do you still put candy in your popcorn, or do you not do that anymore?”

“I still do that,” Kuroko replied. Kagami had laughed at him the first time they had watched a movie together, and decided that Kuroko couldn’t consume anything without high levels of sugar.

“Okay! Be right back!” With that, Aomine went downstairs to prepare the movie snacks.

Kuroko pulled out his phone and sent a quick text to his mother asking if he could stay over at Aomine’s house, and got a yes in reply, so he really didn’t have much of an excuse.

Aomine returned a few minutes later, balancing two bags of popcorn—one for Tetsu and his candy, and one for him—and a few different kinds of drinks. “What did your parents say?” he asked as he carefully set everything down either on his bed or on the bedside table.

“They said it was fine, and to say hello to you for them.” As much as Aomine’s family loved Kuroko, Kuroko’s family also loved Aomine because he had made their son smile so much.

“Awesome! Let’s get this party started!” Aomine said, cracking open a soda and walking over to his shelf full of DVDs. He took a few and tossed them over to his bed like frisbees. “Pick one, Tetsu!”

“You still remember the first Captain America, right?” Kuroko asked as he went through the pile, after using a pillow as a shield because Aomine had just thrown a _stack of DVDs at him_.

Aomine thought for a moment. “...Yyyyes! Yep, I remember that one.”

“Good, because the second one makes Captain America actually cool, so we’re watching that one,” Kuroko replied, passing it to Aomine.

Aomine grinned. “Sounds good to me!” He popped in the DVD, grabbed a couple of extra pillows from his floor, and then hopped back onto the bed. After rearranging all the pillows on his bed to form the ideal movie-watching nest for the two of them, he pressed play on the remote, and settled in to watch—rewatch, technically?—the movie.

...only to spend half of the opening credits watching Tetsu mix his candy-and-popcorn concoction in fascination. Also mild curiosity—he reached out to grab a handful when Tetsu was done, shoving it all into his mouth… and very suddenly remembering why he did not put candy in his popcorn. “Ugh, I still don’t understand it,” he said when he’d finally managed to swallow it all, staring at the rest of Tetsu’s popcorn with distaste.

“And it seems you never will. What _I_ don’t understand is why you eat some every single time, and then continue to complain about it as if you’re surprised that you don’t like it,” Kuroko said, taking a handful of his own and eating it happily.

“What? I do _not_ —” He cut himself off abruptly as he was assaulted by several memories—both old _and_ new—of eating Tetsu’s weird popcorn. “...I do. Huh.” He paused for a moment in confusion, then shrugged and turned his attention back to the movie.

Two hours later, the movie had ended, and the snacks were long gone. Aomine stretched the vague sleepiness away, and then got up. “What next?” he asked, peering at his stack of DVDs.

“Guardians of the Galaxy,” Kuroko said decisively, and far less tired than Aomine because of all of the sugar in his popcorn.

“‘Kay,” Aomine said, stifling a yawn and switching out the DVDs. “I’m gonna get ready for bed before we start it—oh, you need clothes to sleep in, don’t you?” he realized. “Uh… I think I have stuff that will fit you? Hopefully I haven’t thrown it away in the past couple of years.”

“You’ve never had clothes that fit me,” Kuroko informed him. “But I’m sure I’ll manage with whatever you have.”

Aomine laughed sheepishly. “Alright, let’s see…” After a few minutes of rooting through his drawers and closet, he managed to find one of his older t-shirts that was a couple of sizes smaller than he was now, and a pair of soft pants that were far too large, but had a drawstring waistband so Tetsu could adjust them.

Kuroko changed into the clothes and pulled the drawstrings as tight as he could. That didn’t help the length though, and he ended up face planting onto the bed when his feet got tangled in the too-long pants legs.

Aomine burst out laughing. “Uhhh are—you okay?” he forced out between gasps, approaching the bed.

“No. I have died along with my dignity,” Kuroko said into the mattress, not even trying to move from his position, half on the floor and half lying down on the bed.

Aomine sat on the bed next to him, laughter only half-subsided, and poked him in the shoulder. “Well, come back from the dead already, we have a movie to watch.”

“Leave my body in peace. It hasn’t even cooled yet and you’re already poking it. How disrespectful of the dead can you be?”

Aomine waited for a moment, but it seemed like Tetsu really had no intentions of moving any time soon. So, with an evil smirk, Aomine said, “Well then… it seems you’ve left me no choice.” And then, with one swift movement, Aomine pulled Tetsu fully onto the bed, flipped him over, sitting on his legs, and began mercilessly tickling his stomach and sides.

Kuroko’s eyes widened when he was suddenly moved and then he was laughing because Aomine was tickling him, and he struggled to get out from under him, but gave up on that quickly and started trying to slap his hands away instead. “G-get off—get off of me!” He gasped out.

Aomine grabbed Tetsu’s arms and managed to hold both his wrists in one hand, and continued tickling him with the other. “Not so dead now, huh?” he teased, grinning.

“Ao-Aomi—le-let go—” Kuroko was so helplessly short of breath that the word “Aomine-kun” had too many syllables, and the sentence “please let go of me” had too many words. So what he ended up resorting to was a quick and breathless “Daiki! Please!”

Aomine stopped everything out of pure shock—even his heart seemed to stop for a moment, and he had to consciously remind himself to breathe. There was one drawn-out moment in which Aomine just stared down at Tetsu, still half-grinning, and processing what he’d just heard. Then time sped up again, and he was suddenly very aware that he was sitting on the lap of an out-of-breath, flushing Tetsu, one hand holding his wrists and the other now resting at his waist. And then Aomine’s brain short-circuited—he leaned down and, on an impulse, pressed his lips to Tetsu’s.

For a moment Kuroko froze. He didn’t know what to do. Did he have feelings for Aomine? Well... none that he wanted to admit to any time Kagami brought it up like the terrible friend he was. But... but Aomine was going to remember this. When he got his memories back he was going to remember this, and Kuroko couldn’t even think about that properly because he was already kissing back.

Aomine released Tetsu’s wrists, instead grabbing one of his hands and lacing their fingers together, wondering why he’d never thought to do this before, because it was _really nice_. Everything about Tetsu was so soft, from the smooth skin of his hand to the curve of his waist. Aomine ran his tongue along Tetsu’s bottom lip and hummed contentedly, thinking he could maybe just live in this moment forever.

Kuroko ran his fingers through Aomine’s hair, parting his lips for him. He couldn’t really say how long he had wanted to do this with Aomine. It hadn’t been some immediate realization when he’d figured out that he felt more than just friendship for him, it had been a slow progression. But then things had gone to hell between them before he could try to figure it out, and now he wasn’t sure what to make of what was happening, but he was trying not to think too much, because if he thought about it too much he would ruin it.

Aomine tilted his head so he could deepen the kiss, and it was sort of starting to feel like his mind was disintegrating—in a good way—when suddenly he heard his door being opened rather violently for the time of night it was. He pulled back abruptly and sat up, turning to see who it was.

“Dai-chan, would you learn to _close your curtains_ already?” Momoi said, annoyed.

Aomine rolled his eyes. Of _course_ it was Satsuki. He felt himself flushing a little. 

Momoi continued, incensed by his dismissive expression. “I’ve told you a million times, I can see _everything_. And I don’t want to!”

Kuroko could feel his face turning red as he peeked around Aomine to see Momoi standing there. “Hello, Momoi-san,” he greeted quietly.

Momoi started and her eyes widened. “T-t-t-tetsu-kun?!?” She looked back and forth between Aomine and Kuroko, gaping. “Wha—?” 

“He started it,” Kuroko said, pointing at Aomine.

“Oi!” Aomine said, turning away from Satsuki to glare down at Tetsu. “I’ll tickle you again, don’t think I won’t, because I definitely will.”

“Momoi-san will help me if you do,” Kuroko said confidently. As confidently as one could when their face was still bright red.

Momoi would have usually agreed unconditionally to helping Kuroko, but… she felt a little conflicted at the moment. “I… think I’ll just… go.”

Kuroko looked almost betrayed at this. “But Momoi-san…” he protested weakly.

“Sorry, Tetsu-kun!” Momoi said, turning to leave. “Um… maybe next time?” She cast one more angry glare at Aomine over her shoulder. “Close your curtains, idiot! _Now!_ ” And with that, she was gone as quickly as she had arrived.

“I can’t believe she actually left me here,” Kuroko muttered.

“Well it’s not like you’re in _that_ much danger,” Aomine said, his embarrassment beginning to fade a little now that they were alone again. “I only said I would tickle you if you kept being an asshole.”

“I can’t believe that you would threaten me for who I am as a person,” Kuroko said with mock indignation.

“I guess that isn’t a good idea, huh?” Aomine said with a smile, leaning down again. “Because you’re great just the way you are.” He kissed Tetsu gently.

Kuroko started to kiss back, and then he remembered the curtains. He pushed Aomine off of him, resulting in Aomine falling on the floor. “I’m sorry.” He didn’t look sorry at all as he moved to close the curtains for Momoi.

Aomine yelped in surprise as he fell. “Tetsu…” he whined, stretching out on the floor instead of trying to get up.

“Yes, Aomine-kun?” Kuroko asked innocently.

“That was an asshole move,” Aomine replied, almost pouting. “And the punishment is tickles. But I don’t feel like getting up so you should come down here instead.”

“No. I don’t think I’ll be doing that.” Kuroko turned and walked out the door, planning to go ask Aomine’s mom if they had any spare toothbrushes.

“Wha—” Aomine half-raised his head to watch Tetsu walk out, and then gave up on that effort and instead rested his cheek on his arm and closed his eyes with a tired sigh. 

Kuroko came back a few minutes later after brushing his teeth and eyed Aomine on the floor, wondering if the other was planning to sleep there, despite being right next to a bed.

Aomine heard Tetsu return, and he opened his eyes and attempted to sit up… only to slump back down to the floor with a lazy groan. “Tetsu… help me uuuuupppp,” he said sleepily, holding his hands up for Tetsu to take.

Kuroko rolled his eyes, but took Aomine’s hands. He was pretty sure that he wouldn’t be much good in helping Aomine up considering how much bigger Aomine was, but he was nice enough to try.

Aomine genuinely attempted to sit up with Tetsu’s help for a moment or two, but he soon decided it was taking too long, and instead pulled Tetsu down to floor with him.

Kuroko couldn’t even say he was surprised, but it still hurt when his side landed on Aomine’s elbow and he gave a small groan of pain to let Aomine know that.

“Oops,” Aomine said, shifting his arm so he could gently rub Tetsu’s side where his elbow had stabbed him. “Sorry, Tetsu.”

“It’s fine.” He could already imagine having to explain to his team how he’d gotten the bruise he was sure he could feel forming. “Why are we laying on the floor, Aomine-kun?”

“Because _someone_ —” He looked pointedly at Tetsu.“—pushed me down, and now I’m too tired to get up, and the bed is way too far away,”

“The bed is _right there_ ,” Kuroko said, looking at the bed next to them. He could stretch his leg a little and be able to touch it with his foot.

“Too. Far.” Aomine punctuated each word with a poke to Tetsu’s cheek.

“Too far for _you_ maybe,” Kuroko said, getting up and going to the bed, curling up under the covers and closing his eyes.

Once Aomine realized Tetsu really wasn’t coming back to help him up anymore, he sighed. “Alright, alright...” He rolled over onto his stomach so he could push himself up off the floor, and shuffled over to the bed. Tetsu had claimed the side away from the wall, so Aomine had to step over him to get to the empty side. Well… he tried to step over Tetsu, but kind of ended of crawling over him… and may have fallen over partway through and sort of rolled the rest of the way.

“Aomine-kun, you’re crushing me!” Kuroko complained.

“That’s what you get for leaving me on the floor all by myself,” Aomine replied as he tucked himself under the covers as well. “Actually, no, that’s for pushing me onto the floor in the first place.” He settled down lying on his side facing Tetsu, and poked him once in the stomach. “Jerk.”

“Bitch.” Kuroko replied automatically. Kagami may have convinced him to marathon Supernatural at his house one time.

“...Whaaa…?” Aomine narrowed his eyes at Tetsu, partly from confusion, and partly because his eyelids were growing heavy with sleep. “Wh… Since when do you swear?”

“It was a reference,” Kuroko replied, turning over so that he wasn’t facing Aomine anymore.

Aomine mentally shrugged and dismissed the issue, burying his face in the pillow with a sigh, very ready to go to sleep. But then a thought nagged at him until he opened his eyes again and stared at Tetsu’s back, silently watching his side rise and fall with his breaths for a few minutes. He spent that time working up the energy to eventually reach out and hook an arm around Tetsu’s waist, tugging him closer.

Kuroko was a bit surprised by the action, but let Aomine do it anyway, settling into his new spot to try to go to sleep. It wasn’t working though. His thoughts were racing far too much for him to sleep. He had messed up. He’d let himself get close to Aomine again. Closer than before even, and he was going to lose him all over again. As soon as Aomine got his memories back things would go back to normal. This was exactly why he’d started out avoiding him, and now he was in too deep. Kuroko didn’t even realize he was crying until he felt the wetness on his face. He was pretty sure Aomine was already asleep though, so he hoped he wouldn’t notice.

Aomine fell asleep quickly, but at some point found himself being slowly pulled back into consciousness. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, and he wasn’t really sure _why_ his brain had decided to interrupt his sleep… until he realized that the steady movement of Tetsu’s breathing had become shaky and irregular, and that there were soft sounds of sniffling coming from him.

_Tetsu’s… crying?_ Aomine thought, confused and concerned. He had never seen Tetsu cry before—at least, not in the memories he _did_ have—and he had no idea what to do. So he lay there and just kept holding him, hoping that soon either the crying would subside, or he would figure out what he should do. But before he knew it, Tetsu’s breathing began to even out again, and Aomine felt himself drift quickly back to sleep.

The next morning, Kuroko was occupied by the single-minded desire for coffee, followed by a homemade breakfast courtesy of Aomine’s mother, along with pleasant small talk (and Kuroko teaming up with Aomine’s mother to make fun of Aomine).

But then when Kuroko got home and went up to his room, he was immediately slapped in the face again by the events of the night before. He looked around at all the new things that had accumulated there over the past couple of weeks, all the little reminders of Aomine—several stuffed animals, a jacket thrown over the back of a chair, a basketball that he knew wasn’t his own, the pillows on the bed that were now permanently set up for two people to share it, and the clothes he was still wearing that he had borrowed from Aomine. And then he sat down on his bed and tried not to cry again. And failed.

He really was fucked.


	5. Talk to Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Why won’t you just talk to me?_   
>  _There’s a universe inside your head_   
>  _Constellations of the things you left unsaid_   
>  _Talk to me_   
>  _Or watch me leave_
> 
>  
> 
> “Talk to Me” by Lauren Aquilina

“Hey, Tetsu… can I kiss you?”

Kuroko stopped walking, and gave Aomine a weird look. “We are on a street ball court. About to play one on one,” he said flatly.

Aomine shrugged. “So… pre-game good luck kiss?”

Kuroko hesitated as he worked out how he wanted to phrase his answer. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. We aren’t… we don’t do that kind of thing when you have your memories, and I don’t want to do that when you don’t remember everything. I feel like it’s kind of taking advantage of you.”

Aomine looked at the ground for a moment in disappointment, but… “I guess that makes sense,” he admitted. “I mean, not the fact that we’ve never done that before, because _that_ makes no sense to me but—” He cut himself off with a sheepish grin before he said anything too stupid. “Anyway. Uh. Yeah, okay.”

Kuroko offered a small smile, blush still on his face because of the topic of their conversation. “So, do you want to play then?” he asked, holding up a basketball.

 _Now that’s just unfair,_ Aomine thought, looking at Tetsu’s smiling, blushing face. He couldn’t help but sneak a glance at his lips, taking a moment to make himself accept the fact that he must resist, and then averted his gaze. “Yeah, alright.” He looked back up at Tetsu. “Bring it on,” he said, running past Tetsu and ruffling his hair on the way. “Your ball first!”

* * *

Kuroko used his vanishing drive to get around Aomine and then grinned and held out a fist for him to bump.

Aomine grinned back and stepped forward to meet him, but just before he had fully raised his arm, he felt the sudden, dizzying pull of a new memory in the back of his mind. This had been happening with increasing frequency over the past week, so the sensation was generally familiar. But this time, there was a foreboding heaviness to the scene playing out in his head. It began with a fairly typical game—an exciting one, even, a highly anticipated rematch with a rival of his—but gradually, the opposing team all began to lose energy, their faces going dull and their movements growing sluggish. He heard their disenchanted voices echoing right by his ears.

_“What’s the point?” “You’re too strong.” “Why bother trying?” “Monster.”_

The words felt like white-hot knives in his chest. And the finishing blow was when his own past self’s thought suddenly hit him: _“So this is what happens when I try even a little?”_ Crushing despair overwhelmed him, so when past-Tetsu approached with his fist raised, his arm just felt too heavy to lift.

Kuroko slowly lowered his fist when it appeared that Aomine wasn’t going to return his fistbump, smile dropping off of his face.

Tetsu’s movement in reality caught his attention, and suddenly Aomine felt like he was seeing double—one Tetsu raising his fist, the other lowering it. Then, as he helplessly watched his past self disregard Tetsu and blow past him without so much as a glance, his current self rebelled violently. He would _not_ let that happen again. So Aomine blinked and shook off the memory to focus on reality. He reached out for Tetsu’s wrist, lifted his arm, and bumped their fists together.

Kuroko blinked a few times, looking down at their fists and then back up at Aomine. “Did you remember something, Aomine-kun?” he asked.

Aomine panicked and immediately said, “No.” And when he thought about it, he really wasn’t eager to tell Tetsu that he’d just remembered something so awful. Not when he thought about Tetsu crying in his arms that night, and about how much worse it might be if he knew that Aomine was beginning to remember the things that had, apparently, torn them apart. “No,” he repeated, and forced a little chuckle. “Sorry, I just sorta zoned out. Didn’t… uh. Get much sleep last night.”

Kuroko didn’t believe him, but he wasn’t going to push him if Aomine didn’t want to talk. “You should get more rest, Aomine-kun. I might actually beat you if you’re reaction time is slowing this much,” he said loftily.

It took a moment for Aomine to fight off the lingering sadness that was weighing him down, but eventually he managed a smile—a _real_ smile—at Tetsu’s challenge. “You think so, huh? Let’s find out,” he said, dribbling the ball a few times before they resumed their game.

* * *

Aomine had vaguely held out the hope that maybe if he just refused to talk about the sad parts of his memories, they would stop returning to him... but they didn’t. Every day, he woke up with new ones floating around in his head: images of empty blue eyes and foreboding grey skies, the feeling of heaviness that seemed to pervade his entire being, sleeping fitfully on a warm concrete roof that was as familiar to him as his bed at home was...

Then, one day, Aomine was in his kitchen with Tetsu, refilling their water bottles after a particularly intense bout of one-on-one. Even Aomine was still a little out of breath as he asked Tetsu, “You want ice?”

“Yes please,” Kuroko replied, also out of breath, and a bit flushed from exertion.

As Aomine turned around and handed Tetsu his newly filled water bottle, he let out a half-stifled laugh. “Pffft Tetsu, your face is still bright red. Here,” he said, filling a bowl with ice and placing it in front of Tetsu. “Stick your face in this, see if it helps.” He tried to sound helpful and mildly concerned but he was still sort of laughing so it ruined the effect.

Kuroko narrowed his eyes at Aomine, and when the other turned around to fill his own water bottle, Kuroko dumped a handful of ice cubes down the back of his shirt. “Unlike the ice cream, the ice cubes did deserve that, and so did you.”

Aomine let out an embarrassingly high-pitched yelp, and turned around to shout at Tetsu, “What the hell wa—” The moment he locked eyes with Tetsu, the end of the sentence died in his throat, and suddenly the air seemed to be… orange?

He blinked and found himself in a memory—but this one was familiar. Walking down the street at sunset with Tetsu, eating ice cream, until eventually Aomine said something that resulted in Tetsu shoving ice cream down his back. But this time, it wasn’t the cold sensation against his skin that preoccupied him. He was beginning to hear his own voice, the words that had prompted Tetsu to assault him with the ice cream. _“The more I practice, the more boring basketball gets, so why should I go? ...I’ll probably start skipping games, soon, too.”_

“Aomine-kun?” Kuroko asked with a slight frown and a tilt of his head. “Aomine-kun, are you okay?” This had been happening more frequently. Aomine would remember something, but he wouldn’t smile like he had before and he would never tell Kuroko what he was remembering.

Aomine vaguely registered Tetsu’s question, and began an answer without really having any idea where he was taking it. “Yeah… yeah, I’m…” He drifted off, still busy processing that the person in this memory was actually him, that he had somehow begun hating the sport he loved most. Tetsu’s words to him in the memory brought some of the light back to his eyes, but he could see through it, could _feel_ the storm brewing inside his past self. And he knew what happened later. He’d been seeing it all week, how he and Tetsu both became emptier and more distant over time. It made this small respite seem meaningless—almost _more_ sad—in comparison.

“Aomine-kun,” Kuroko said seriously, pulling Aomine down by the collar of his shirt to make him look him in the eye. “What are you remembering? I’m tired of you pretending you’re not remembering things. Your recovery is important to everyone. Please stop hiding your progress just because you don’t like what you remember.”

That jolted Aomine out of the memory visually, but even as he stared into present Tetsu’s eyes, the emotions remained—both the hollow feeling of his past self, and his current self’s horror about it. And the last thing he wanted right now was to dump any of these awful feelings on Tetsu. “It’s nothing,” he muttered, not quite meeting Tetsu’s eyes.

A bit of anger sparked in Kuroko at the outright lie, because he’d been dealing with Aomine doing that for a week, and he was legitimately concerned for him. “Daiki, please don’t lie to me. I’m tired of it.”

Aomine’s heart skipped a beat as Tetsu used his first name, but it was also accompanied by an uncomfortable lurch in his stomach, as the tone of his voice was entirely different from the last time it had happened. The discomfort turned quickly to irritation by the time Tetsu was done speaking, though. “Wh— _you’re_ tired?” He pulled back, out of Tetsu’s grasp. “How do you think I feel? I lost two whole years of my life, _and_ my best friend, and you won’t tell me anything!”

Kuroko flinched slightly at the mention of Aomine losing him. “You weren’t the only one who lost their best friend,” Kuroko said quietly, anger draining out of him as he looked at the ground, shoulders slumping a bit.

Aomine had barely a split second to think before he was assaulted by another memory, much more vivid than the last one. Surrounded by fellow athletes, a crowd roaring around him, the entire setting was familiar and normal… except for one part. Tetsu, standing very still amidst the commotion, unnoticed by everyone else but commanding the entirety of Aomine’s attention just by being there. Slowly, as Aomine looked at Tetsu, he came into clearer focus. And he was more distraught than Aomine had ever seen him, shock and pain displayed openly on his face, tears spilling from his eyes. He fell to his knees, outright sobbing, and yet still no one saw him besides Aomine. And Aomine felt...

...nothing?

Everything else about the memory was coming through in explicit detail, but his own emotions seemed to be missing. There was just… emptiness. The possibility occurred to Aomine that he just happened to have felt nothing at this moment in his past, but he found that hard to believe, because his present self was almost nauseous with guilt.

When it didn’t seem like Aomine was going to say something, Kuroko turned and started walking towards the door. He wasn’t quite sure where he was planning on going, but he felt like he needed to get out.

Caught somewhere between desperately wanting Tetsu to stay and not caring about Tetsu—or anything—at all, Aomine was frozen. All he could manage was a soft, half-hearted, “Tetsu…” as he watched him walk away.

* * *

_Aomine-kun, would you like to play one on one with me today?_ Kuroko texted a few days later.

The text notification woke Aomine up from his nap, and although he would love to see Tetsu, he was also not really in the mood to deal with the world at the moment. _Nah, not today, sorry._

It felt like Kuroko was back in middle school again. Aomine rejecting an offer to play basketball, and after the interaction they’d had before it just made it even worse. Kuroko found himself at Kagami’s house shortly after, knocking on his friend’s door.

Kagami wasn’t quite sure who to expect at the door, as he hadn’t made plans with anyone. But of all people, he especially wasn’t expecting _Kuroko_ to show up at his apartment unannounced. “Uh… hey,” he greeted, stepping back to let him in and closing the door behind him. “What’s up?”

Kuroko opened his mouth to say something, but closed it when no words came to him, and instead ended up hugging Kagami, burying his face in his chest as he started to cry.

 _Uh. Crap._ Kagami was alarmed, to say the least. He froze in panic for a moment, unsure how exactly he was going to fix this—but then he decided to just take things one step at a time. _Step one._ Kagami hugged Kuroko back, patting his back softly. He stayed like that for a few minutes, waiting until Kuroko stopped shaking so badly. _Step two._ “So, uh… what’s—what happened?”  

“I’m going to lose Aomine-kun again. I already went through this once. I don’t want to do it again,” Kuroko mumbled into Kagami’s shirt.

 _Step three._ Kagami did his best to control the utter rage he felt at Aomine for making Kuroko cry… but there was only so much he could do. “Do you want me to beat him up for you? Because I will. Happily.” _Okay maybe that wasn’t a great step three..._

“Please don’t,” Kuroko said quietly.

 _Step three, failed. Abandon plan._ Kagami just stood there silently for a while, still hugging Kuroko, because at the very least he knew this was working to some degree.

“He’s starting to remember everything that happened. And he won’t tell me any of it, so I don’t know how much he knows, but we had an argument the other day, and now he doesn’t want to play basketball, and I messed up because I wasn’t supposed to get close again.” It all came out kind of rushed, and about halfway through Kuroko started crying again.

Kagami rubbed his back a little and waited a minute. Then, not quite sure if he was saying the right thing, he asked, “What… um… what were you guys arguing about?”

“About how he won’t tell me what he remembers. He used to get happy and tell me and Momoi-san what he remembered and for the past week he’s just looked sad or—or like he looked then, like he doesn’t care. And when I would ask him what he remembered he wouldn’t tell me. And now he doesn’t want to play basketball. And it’s going to be worse than last time, because this time he kissed me. This time I’m not just losing my friend, because apparently we could have been more than that in middle school, and oh God am I glad we weren’t because I don’t know how I’m going to handle it now when I see it coming, much less how I would have handled it then.” He looked up at Kagami, red-tinged eyes pleading with him for an answer. “What am I supposed to do?” he asked, his voice breaking as a sob caught in his throat.

Kagami thought he’d been doing pretty good with this whole situation so far, despite the fact that dealing with crying people was a step outside his comfort zone usually. Crying _Kuroko_ specifically added another step. The kissing part added two more, and the idea of _Aomine_ kissing _Kuroko_ added at least another two. So all in all… well, okay he may have already forgotten the numbers he had just mentally assigned all of those things, but basically this was way too many steps outside his comfort zone. So he tried to deal with the situation in the best way he knew how: “Um… do you wanna… talk about it over dinner? I was just about to start cooking…”

Kuroko sniffled a bit, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Okay,” he agreed, not very surprised at all that Kagami wanted to deal with this with food.  

Kagami gave him one last pat on the back and let him go. “Have a seat for a sec, I’ll be right back,” he said, heading to the kitchen to see if he had all the necessary ingredients to make a vanilla milkshake. He did, thankfully, so he did that first and brought it out to Kuroko just a few minutes later. “I don’t know if it’ll be as good as the Maji Burger ones, but here you go.”

Kuroko forced a small smile, his eyes were still rimmed red, but he seemed to have calmed down some. “Thank you, Kagami-kun,” he said taking the milkshake and sipping at it. His smile became a bit more genuine. “Kagami-kun makes better milkshakes than Maji Burger. I didn’t know that was possible.”

Kagami blushed a little at the compliment—that sure was high praise, coming from Kuroko—but also returned Kuroko’s smile with relief. “Glad you like it.” And with that, he returned the the kitchen and started on dinner. As he cooked, he used the alone time to think about the situation. He spent a particularly long time chopping vegetables violently while thinking about how much he would love to punch Aomine’s stupid, smug face for hurting Kuroko. It was the point at which he started imagining the carrots he was cutting up to be Aomine’s fingers that he realized maybe he needed to calm down. Even though he just wanted to tell Kuroko to forget about that asshole, he knew it would be pointless—after seeing how deeply affected Kuroko had been during their match with Touou during the Inter-High, he knew that Aomine was important to him. But that also meant that he would have to come up with actual advice… he sighed and kept thinking.

Twenty minutes later, he brought the food out to the table and sat down across from Kuroko, handing him a plate.

“Thank you, Kagami-kun,” Kuroko said, accepting the food and starting to half-heartedly eat.

Kagami wolfed down his first plateful of food in under a minute, then refilled the plate and started eating at a speed closer to human. “So…” he began between bites. “Is there any point in telling you to forget about him?” He figured he could at least _try_ this approach, even if he was mostly sure it wouldn’t work.

“Could you forget about Himuro-san?” Kuroko replied.

Kagami opened his mouth to tell Kuroko to stop deflecting, but then he thought about it—looked down at his fidgeting hands and tried to imagine just completely writing Tatsuya out of his life. And his first reaction was that it was impossible, he would never let that happen, he never _wanted_ that to happen. Because imagining for even one second how it might feel to never have Tatsuya in his life again made him almost physically ill. He looked back up at Kuroko, put all those feelings into the context of this situation, and he suddenly understood perfectly. “No,” he said matter-of-factly. “I couldn’t. You’re right.” He paused for a minute, taking a few bites of food to give himself time to think before he continued. “So. You can’t let him go. But you also can’t have the middle school version of him back forever. Things are gonna keep changing because he’s gonna keep changing as he regains his memories, right? So… what do you want, exactly? That’s probably a good thing to be sure about.”

Kuroko was pretty much done eating after finishing half of his plate. He pushed it away from him slightly as he thought about what it was that he wanted. “I want my friend back. Even if he is different now. I still want him in my life. And if he wants to, I want to be more than friends, but I’m okay with not doing that too. I just want him in my life,” he decided.

Kagami nodded. “Right, okay. So, does _he_ know that?”

“To know that, he would have to know that we’re not friends at all after middle school. I don’t know how much he remembers because he won’t tell me,” Kuroko explained.

Kagami hummed in thought. “Well, are you gonna try to talk to him about it again? Try to convince him to tell you stuff?” He absentmindedly cracked his knuckles as he wondered if maybe that idiot would need a smack upside the head to be _convinced_.

“I don’t know. I was going to try to talk to him about it after some basketball, but then he didn’t want to play, so I don’t know if he really wants to see me right now.”

“Then try again tomorrow. Or the next day. Because…” Kagami paused to find the right words for what he was trying to say. “If he thinks you’ve given up on him, then… when he starts remembering everything, he’s not gonna see any reason to believe that things can be fixed between you guys. And all the same crap’s gonna happen all over again.”

Kuroko considered the idea for a few minutes. "Kagami-kun can have surprisingly good advice sometimes," he decided out loud. "But... do you have any advice for if that doesn't work?"

Kagami opened his mouth to respond indignantly to the first half of what Kuroko said, but then clamped it shut at the second half. He…. hadn’t really thought it through that far, yet. “Um… well… we’ll… figure it out as we go? ...Or maybe that’s when you can just let me beat him up.”

“Why does it always come back to violence when I talk about my middle school friends to you?” Kuroko asked with a sigh.

“It—it doesn’t _always_ —I’m not—” Kagami spluttered, then conceded. “...Uh… Well… They’re… It’s only when they’re being assholes. I mean… I _might_ not punch Kise, at this point.”

“I would,” Kuroko mumbled quietly. In the distance one could hear Kise’s heart break.

Kagami blinked in surprise, then burst out laughing. “Now that’s something I wanna see! He’d probably start crying.”

“He would and has cried for less,” Kuroko pointed out, taking a sip of his drink.

Still laughing, Kagami shook his head. “They’re all insane.”

“I was one of them, you know,” Kuroko deadpanned.

“Uh-huh,” Kagami agreed matter-of-factly, smirking at first, but then he grew more serious. “And you know, I… didn’t really understand that much, until this whole…” He gestured vaguely. “...incident… happened. It didn’t make sense to me that you were ever friends with all these big-headed assholes. But now that I’ve seen a little bit of what they were before… it makes more sense.”

Kuroko smiled a little sadly. “Yeah. They were all different in middle school. Well, except Midorima-kun. He’s pretty much the same, except a little more cynical. Which is probably because of Akashi-kun. But everyone else was different.”

Kagami’s attention was drawn by the name of one of the two members of the Generation of Miracles whom he hadn’t met yet. “What did Akashi do, exactly?”

“He lost his mind, and he was Midorima-kun’s friend,” Kuroko said simply, not offering up any more information than that. 

Kagami opened and closed his mouth a few times, wanting to ask more, because that didn’t really explain much. But he also knew Kuroko, and if Kuroko didn’t want to talk about something, even when he was directly asked… he probably had a good reason. So he just nodded and returned to his food, silently thinking. After a little while, he put his utensils down on an empty plate, and said, “You wanna stay over? You can pick a movie or something for us to watch while I clean up here, maybe I could make another milkshake...” He paused and shrugged. “And then tomorrow… maybe you can text Aomine, see what happens.”

Kuroko nodded and offered a small smile. “And let me guess, if he doesn’t want to hang out you’ll go beat him up?” he asked sarcastically.

Kagami grinned. “You read my mind.”

* * *

_R u free today?_ Kuroko texted the next morning as he brewed coffee in Kagami’s kitchen, hair sticking everywhere, and he only felt half-functional since he’d just woken up.

Aomine was woken by the text notification sound and grabbed blindly at his bedside table, his face still buried in his pillow. It took a few tries, and he may have knocked a few things to the ground, but eventually he found his phone, groaning sleepily as he raised his head to check the message. Usually, he would have just gone back to sleep immediately after, but when he saw the message was from Tetsu, he propped himself up on his elbows to respond. He narrowed his eyes at the uncharacteristically lazy grammar. _tetsu r u okay r u dying why is ur gramr shit rn_

Kuroko blinked a few times, trying to figure out what Aomine was talking about. _coffee no yet_

Aomine got an instant mental image of pre-coffee, bedhead Tetsu, and chuckled. _cute. but ya im free today. have ur coffee first tho or u might hurt urself_

 _i aready hit my head on a dor :(_ Kuroko texted back, pouring his first mug of coffee, waiting impatiently for it to cool.

 _thats p rude wat did the door ever do 2 u?_ Aomine didn’t realize how much he was grinning until his cheeks started aching. He face planted into his pillow again, but not with the intention of going back to sleep… amazingly. He kept his phone in his hand waiting for Tetsu’s response.

 _ur suposed to b on me side not dors, daiki_ Kuroko only half looked at his phone as he was mostly watching the coffee for any signs of it cooling off.

Aomine was actually blushing a little as he typed his reply, thinking it really didn’t make sense that anyone could be this adorable through just a text. _alrite alrite so… wat. do u want me 2 fite it or wat. ill fite a door 4 u tetsu_

 _plz ight the dor 4 m_ Kuroko texted, and then as an after thought sent another text. _by th wy kagami wanna ight u too_

Aomine narrowed his eyes. _u can tell eyebrows i will fite him & the fucking door @ the same time, no prob_

_k u bet win tha ight 4 me_

_ofc,_ Aomine wrote, then sent a second text right afterwards. _when ur human again let me kno where/when u wanna meet._ Then he set his phone down and promptly drifted off to sleep again.

When Kagami finally woke up, he walked into the kitchen to find Kuroko with his atrocious bedhead, sitting on the floor nursing a cup of coffee. “Nursing” being in the loosest sense of the word, as he was just sort of staring sadly at the steaming mug on the floor in front of him. “Uh… Kuroko… are you alive?”

Kuroko’s forehead scrunched up as he thought about the question. “I think so?” he decided after a moment.

“Uh-huh…” Kagami replied dubiously, stepping carefully around him and his coffee to get to the fridge. “Alright, breakfast for two it is then.” He got out all the ingredients and started cooking before he added, “So… have you texted Aomine or are you not awake enough for that yet?”

Kuroko perked up at the mention of Aomine and gave Kagami a bright smile. “He said he would fight a door for me!” Kuroko told him dreamily.

Kagami raised an eyebrow at him. “And… why is he going to fight a door for you, exactly?”

Kuroko frowned, face taking on an expression of concentration. “I don’t remember,” he said, shoulders slumping and hanging his head.

“That’s… probably for the best,” Kagami muttered, half to himself and half to Kuroko.

“Taiga-kun, do you think my coffee is okay to drink now?” Kuroko asked, looking up at Kagami with a slight pout.

Kagami wouldn’t have cared so much about being called by his first name—he was used to it from his time in America—except, this was _Kuroko_ , and he had never heard him call anyone by their first name in the entire time he’d known him. “Don’t call me that, it’s weird coming from you,” he said, turning away so Kuroko wouldn’t see him flushing slightly. “And yeah, the coffee’s probably fine. If you’re really worried, put an ice cube in it or something.”

“It’ll taste funny if I put a frozen water cube inside of it.” Kuroko protested, not seeming to care that Kagami had just rejected him using his first name.

“No it won’t…? It’s just water,” Kagami said, slightly concerned by Kuroko’s apparent lack of basic vocabulary. He didn’t know Kuroko was _this_ bad in the morning without coffee… It was kind of funny, though.

“It will,” Kuroko insisted stubbornly, but picked up the coffee and took a long sip, starting to look more alive the more he drank.

A peaceful morning silence took over for several minutes, while Kagami cooked and Kuroko drank his coffee. Eventually Kagami divided the food between two plates and brought them to the table. “...You gonna come eat up here or should I put your plate on the floor?”

Kuroko looked mildly affronted by the idea, and got up. He refilled his mug before he walked over to the table to join Kagami. “So, I think I’m hanging out with Aomine-kun later today,” he told him.

“Oh, good, so you weren’t just asking him to fight doors for you,” Kagami said with a snort.

Kuroko flushed a little with embarrassment. “We don’t speak of how I act before coffee,” he said firmly.

Kagami held his hands up in concession. “Alright, alright,” he said, trying to suppress his amused smirk as he continued. “Anyway, uh… I mean, I think things are gonna turn out better than you think. That’s just me though. So, good luck, I guess?”

“Thank you,” Kuroko said, and then as an after-thought, “If this works out as well as you think it will, you’ll probably be seeing a lot more of him,” he said passively.

Kagami grimaced, and he was pretty sure one of his eyes twitched as he imagined putting up with that guy on a regular basis. But then he sighed. “Well… if that also means you’re gonna be as happy as you have been the last couple of weeks… I can deal with that,” he relented. (Though his eye may have still been twitching a little.) 

Kuroko smiled at Kagami. “Thank you, Kagami-kun.” He said sincerely.


	6. Be Still

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Foolish one with the smile, you don't have to be brave_   
>  _I'll gladly climb your walls if you'll meet me halfway_   
>  _Every time we fall down_   
>  _But we're falling from grace_   
>  _Here's my hand and my heart_   
>  _It's yours to take_
> 
>  
> 
> “Be Still” by Kelly Clarkson

_Would you like to play one on one?_ Kuroko texted Aomine after he left Kagami’s house.

There was a short delay in which Aomine brought himself back into the world of the living, and then finally managed to type out, _ya bring it on. usual place, right now?_

 _That sounds fine to me._ Kuroko replied, changing course to go to the basketball court instead of his house.

Aomine grinned and pushed himself up, all at once completely awake and excited to start his day by playing basketball with Tetsu. But then, while he was sitting on the edge of his bed, everything suddenly shifted. One moment he smiling, about to stand up and start getting ready to go… The next moment, he was staring blankly at a much dimmer, messier room, and found he couldn’t summon the will to push himself up off the bed, no matter how hard he tried. His past self’s thoughts echoed in his head and seemed to weigh him down even further. _What’s the point? Why should I bother getting up?_ So he ended up lying back down and staying in bed all day alone with his thoughts, ignoring Satsuki’s flurry of concerned texts an hour later, and not even opening the single text from Tetsu sometime around sunset. And then as the sky grew darker, he rolled over and went right back to sleep, not having moved at all.

Aomine squeezed his eyes shut and heaved a deep breath to shake off the heavy daze of the memory. He reopened his eyes and glanced around his room, reassured to see that it was only mildly messy, and the sunlight was brightly shining in through the window. “What the _fuck?”_ he muttered, but then took another deep breath and felt the warm energy return to his body. He went about getting ready like usual and tried to push the newly regained memory aside, instead thinking about his plans with Tetsu.

When he got to the basketball court, Tetsu was already there. “Yo,” he greeted, tossing his basketball towards Tetsu. “Have enough coffee?” he teased with a grin.

“An entire pot of it. I didn’t let Kagami-kun have any,” Kuroko replied, catching the ball and tossing it towards one of the baskets. It missed.

Aomine raised an eyebrow. “Eyebrows saw you pre-coffee and you let him live?”

“You’re still alive too,” Kuroko pointed out. “Besides, I think the worst thing I said to him was ‘frozen water cubes would make it taste weird’ when he suggested ice to cool the coffee. It could have been a lot worse than that. And he made me food. He gets a pardon for that.”

“Pffffffft ‘frozen water cubes’?” Aomine said as he ran to retrieve the basketball.

“Don’t you dare start making fun of me,” Kuroko said, narrowing his eyes at Aomine.

Aomine aimed a one-armed shot at the opposite goal Tetsu had aimed for and sank the basket easily. “Now _why_ would I wanna do that?” he said with a smirk. He pulled out his phone. “I have some pretty great stuff saved in here now, though, wanna see?” He approached Tetsu and started scrolling through their texts from earlier that morning and reading them out loud phonetically, exactly as they were written, trying not to fall over laughing as he did so.

Kuroko looked mortified, and his face had gone red. “Stop that!” He reached for the phone, trying to snatch it from Aomine’s hand.

Aomine held it just above his reach and continued reading the texts out loud.

Kuroko glared and wrapped his hands around Aomine’s bicep, he may have let his nails dig in a bit, and yanked downwards to pull his arm down so that he could reach the phone.

Aomine yelped. “Ow, jeez, Tetsu—alright, al _right_ , I’ll stop!” he said, his voice pained, but he was also still laughing a little.

“Delete. Them,” Kuroko said through gritted teeth.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Aomine did as he said, showing his screen as he deleted all the texts. He wasn’t particularly bothered, because of course, he had already saved screencaps of all of them as well.

“The pictures too.” Kuroko had known Aomine long enough to know the text messages wouldn’t be all he had.

 _...Shit._ “I don’t know what you’re talking about…?” Aomine said as innocently as he could manage.

“Then give me your phone,” Kuroko challenged, arching an eyebrow at Aomine.

Aomine hesitated for a moment, then smirked. “...Only if you can beat me at one-on-one,” he said, going to retrieve the ball again.

Kuroko followed after him, doing his best to use his misdirection to get close before stealing the phone and running towards the other side of the court to put some space between himself and Aomine as he started deleting the pictures.

“TETSUUUUU!” Aomine shouted as he chased him across the court. “NOOOOOOOOO!” He caught up to Tetsu and grabbed his arm, pulling him closer and reaching to try to snatch the phone back.

“Let go of me!” Kuroko said, struggling to both get out of Aomine’s hold and keep the phone out of his grasp. There were still _so many_ pictures of the conversation. Kuroko knew there were that many for exactly this situation—so that it would take time for him to delete them if he managed to take the phone, and Aomine could use that time to get it back from him.

“Let go of my phone!” Aomine countered. He temporarily gave up on trying to reach the actual phone, and instead got an arm around Tetsu’s waist for a more solid hold on him before he started reaching for the phone again.

“It will die on the asphalt if I let go of it.” Kuroko told him, before he got an idea. “We’re kind of close together, don’t you think, Daiki?” Kuroko asked, lowering his voice a bit, and pressing himself against Aomine. He leaned up on his tiptoes to be closer to Aomine’s face, giving him a flirty smile before leaning even closer and whispering in his ear. “If we weren’t in public, we could probably get even closer than this.” He was looking over Aomine’s shoulder and deleting pictures as he spoke to him, hoping that this would be a good enough distraction.

Aomine was surprised at first, not having expected this, but then he smiled mischievously. “What, are you shy or something?” he teased, sliding his hand down and firmly grabbing Tetsu’s ass.

Kuroko let out a small squeak, eyes going wide with surprise. He might not have thought this plan through. “A-Aomine-kun!” He was blushing, and he may or may not have dropped Aomine’s phone in shock.

Aomine laughed. “You think I haven’t seen you pull this crap on Kise before?” His hand was still firmly in place as he leaned down and kissed Tetsu on one of his adorable blushing cheeks. “Well, it’s not gonna work on me.”

It usually worked on Kise too. If Kuroko wanted something from him it didn’t take much effort to get it. His blush only grew darker when Aomine kissed him on the cheek and didn’t move his hand. “I hope your phone screen cracked,” Kuroko muttered, ducking his head to hide his face.

Aomine frowned—well, tried to. He was still laughing a bit. “That’s a little uncalled for, don’t you think?” He probably would’ve gotten more upset if he wasn’t thoroughly enjoying being this close to a very flustered Tetsu.

“No, I don’t think it is,” he said, trying to move away from Aomine to reestablish some personal space, and get the phone back.

Aomine let Tetsu go—but not before looking around to see where his phone had landed, so that immediately after releasing Tetsu he could grab it first. He frantically scrolled through his pictures and sighed in relief: there were five screencaps left. He promptly forwarded them to Satsuki so that they’d be safe for now.

Kuroko knew he’d lost— _for now_ —when he saw Aomine sending them to someone. Presumably Momoi. He’d have to get her phone soon as well. Aomine’s he could take while the other boy was sleeping, that would be easy enough to deal with. In the mean time, he was going to go steal Aomine’s water bottle, as an excuse to not face him while he was still blushing bright red.

Satisfied with his victory, Aomine grinned as he went to pick up the basketball again. “Oi, Tetsu!” he called. “You sure you’re still up for playing? Your face is a little red, you must have over-exerted yourself already!” He dribbled the ball a few times as he approached Tetsu.

Kuroko narrowed his eyes at Aomine for a moment, before deciding not to rise to the taunt, bending over to retrieve the water bottle from Aomine’s bag.

“Oi, that’s mine!” Aomine objected, stopping right in front of Tetsu and beginning to twirl the ball on his fingers instead of bouncing it. “Where’s yours?”

“Oh, well, since apparently I’ve already _over-exerted myself_ I think I’m more entitled to the water bottle,” Kuroko said, taking a long drink from it before answering the question. “I didn’t bring mine. I was just about to go home when you said to meet here. I thought it would be longer before you woke up enough to join me.”

Aomine’s smile faltered for just a moment at that, as he was reminded of the memory he’d been hit with upon getting out of bed. He shook it off as quickly as he could, though, and turned around so he could recompose his expression. “Well, hurry up and un-exert yourself then so we can play,” he said in a joking tone.

Kuroko noticed, but since whatever the look was seemed to pass quickly, he decided to let it slide and put the water bottle down before stealing the ball from him.

* * *

After they were done, they went over to Aomine’s bag to share his water bottle, and Kuroko ended up lying on the ground with his head resting in Aomine’s lap, closing his eyes against the sun.

Aomine watched the sky for a few minutes, squinting in the sunlight, but got bored pretty quickly and looked down at Tetsu instead. And, upon noticing that his eyes were closed, he straight-up stared, smiling a little. A breeze blew by and gently tousled Tetsu’s bangs, drawing his attention to them, and before he knew it he was aimlessly playing with his hair.

Kuroko cracked an eye open when he felt Aomine messing with his hair, but the sun was bright and he found he really couldn’t bring himself to care too much, so he just went back to having his eyes closed and let Aomine play with his hair, despite knowing that it was going to be sticking up everywhere by the end of it.

The silence was peaceful and admiring Tetsu’s face was nice, but Aomine’s mind wandered again fairly quickly, and all the things that had been nagging at him the most recently came to haunt him first. Before he could think about it twice, he started to voice a thought. “I, uh—I remembered something. This morning.” He winced a little, not sure whether he actually wanted to talk about this in retrospect, but he couldn’t just take it back now.

Kuroko shifted a bit to face Aomine more, still lying with his head in Aomine’s lap, but now able to open his eyes to look up at his face with interest. “What did you remember?”

“It—well, it… it wasn’t good,” Aomine began vaguely, trying to think of how to describe what he’d seen and felt. “It wasn’t _awful_ , but… well… it was a whole day where I just laid in bed,” he said, then laughed a little. “It sounds pretty stupid, now that I’m saying it out loud, but…” He drifted off, unsure how to continue.

“Momoi-san wasn’t happy when you started doing that. I remember one time she dragged you to school with a black eye for it,” Kuroko told him.

Aomine smiled a little and rolled his eyes. _Typical Satsuki._ But the smile faded quickly. “I mean… I wasn’t happy either. That’s the part that was bad. I just… couldn’t get up. I couldn’t make myself get up. It was like— like there had been _something_ that made me wanna get up and go to school and all that. And then it was just… gone. I felt…” He let out a mirthless chuckle. “It still sounds dumb, but. I felt cold. And dull. And heavy.”

Kuroko looked a little sad now, but he mostly tried to keep it from showing on his face. “I think it passes. You did start showing up to school again. I mean, you slept on the roof most of the time, but you still started coming again.”

Aomine wanted to be assured by that, he really did, but… “That doesn’t sound much better.” He paused and then added, “Did—did I eat, at least? When I went to school?” His heart was beating a little quickly and his face was warm with self-consciousness, but he really needed some answers to the questions this memory had raised.

Kuroko nodded. “Yes. Mostly Kise-kun's lunch, but yes,” he told him. “Why? Did you not eat in your memory?”

“I… don’t think so?” Aomine said. In all his efforts to recall details of the memory, it began to seep back into all his senses until he wasn’t staring at Tetsu, he was staring at his bedroom ceiling. “I just didn’t get up. All day. For anything. I… might have felt hungry? Maybe? But I just didn’t care enough to do anything about it. And then night came again, and I just went to sleep.”

Kuroko reached up and gently stroked Aomine’s cheek when he started to look like he wasn’t seeing him anymore. “But that changes. You do get up. You do go to school, even if you don’t go to class, and you do eat and take care of yourself. It only took Momoi-san dragging you to school two times. Do you remember any of that?” he asked.

Tetsu’s soft touch brought reality back to Aomine’s senses like a rock being tossed into a pond. The memory wavered and was slowly pushed aside by the warmth and brightness of the sun, the sight of Tetsu’s eyes, and the sound of his voice. He took a moment to process the words. “Not… yet?” he answered slowly. “But that’s—that’s good to know, I guess. I don’t want another memory like that. It was—” Aomine paused, the words caught in his throat, and he ended up dropping to a whisper. “I was scared.” And then he pressed his mouth shut, and averted his gaze.

Kuroko sat up fully and wrapped his arms around Aomine. “You’re fine right now though. And I’m here for you. I promise. As long as you still want me to be here, I’ll be here.”

Aomine let out a shaky breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, and returned the hug, hiding his face in Tetsu’s shoulder and just breathed for a bit. “Thank you,” he murmured eventually.

“It’s no problem,” Kuroko replied, running his fingers through Aomine’s hair.

Another minute or so passed before another nagging thought brought feelings of guilt down on Aomine, and he said, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Kuroko asked with a slight frown.

“For the other day. Well, for the past week. When I didn’t wanna tell you stuff about… these kinds of memories,” Aomine replied. “They’re just. Not easy to talk about.”

Kuroko considered his reply to that, not wanting to say the wrong thing. “I can’t say that I understand what it’s like to get memories of your life back, but I can understand why some of them would be hard to talk about. Some things from then are hard for me to talk about as well. But, I think that you should, even if it’s not to me, it could be to Momoi-san or your parents, but to someone. It’s usually recommended in psychological recoveries at least, and I’m open to listen.”

Aomine took a moment to consider, and then nodded into Tetsu’s shoulder. “Yeah. You’re probably right. I… I’ll try.” Then he sighed and pulled back from Tetsu gently with a smile. “Wanna go get ice cream?”

“I don’t want to get up. I’m tired,” Kuroko complained, letting himself go limp so that he was just dead weight leaning against Aomine.

“Well then it’s a good thing I’m un-tired enough for both of us!” Aomine said with a grin, and he got his feet beneath himself, scooped Tetsu up, and stood up holding him.

“Wait! No!” Kuroko protested, eyes widened when he was lifted off the ground. “Put me down!”

“But you said you didn’t wanna get up. And I want ice cream. So I’m doing the getting up for you. That seems perfectly fair to me,” Aomine said, attempting to hold a serious face.

“It’s not perfectly fine to me! We are in public, Aomine-kun,” he argued.

Aomine very quickly came up with a new proposal. A simple one: “Convince me.”

Kuroko narrowed his eyes. “Aomine-kun, if you let me down I’ll pay for ice cream,” he tried.

“Ehhh… not convinced,” Aomine said with a shrug. “Try again.”

Kuroko rolled his eyes at Aomine as he realized what he wanted. “You know, you’ve never once called me by first name, but all of a sudden you’re expecting me to do it for you all the time.”

Aomine’s brow furrowed for a moment. “But I do call you… oh,” he realized, then adopted a mock-hurt expression. “You mean you don’t like it when I call you Tetsu?”

“I do. I would have told you years ago if I didn’t. I’m just interested in hearing you say Tetsuya at least once. Probably for the same reason you like hearing me say your first name.”

“Alright then,” Aomine said, then lifted Tetsu so his face was closer to his and murmured, “Tetsuya.”

Kuroko had been expecting it to be said casually, not like that, and found himself blushing again as he whispered “Daiki” back to Aomine.

Aomine felt the same quickening of his heartbeat that he had felt the last few times Tetsu had said his name—not to mention, Tetsu was blushing, so overall, Aomine couldn’t stop the smile if he tried. And he smiled and just looked at Tetsu for a second, felt Tetsu’s weight in his arms and he heard Tetsu’s words echo in his head, _“I’m here for you. I promise,”_ and he knew that to be true with all his heart.

And then he started feeling a little silly just carrying Tetsu in the middle of a basketball court, so he laughed a little and then pretended to have to consider. “Hmmmm… I suppose that’s good enough.” He spoke nonchalantly, but smiled widely as he let Tetsu down from his arms.

Kuroko really was tired from all of the basketball, but he walked to get ice cream with Aomine anyway, happily letting the stuff cool him down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3 HAPPY BIRTHDAY AOMINE <3


	7. Doubt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Temperature is dropping, temperature is dropping,_   
>  _I'm not sure if I can see this ever stopping,_   
>  _Shaking hands with the dark parts of my thoughts, no,_   
>  _You are all that I've got, no._
> 
>  
> 
> “Doubt” by twenty one pilots

Aomine and Kuroko had finally gotten away from Kuroko’s parents, who were very happy to see Aomine back in their home. “I’m sorry about that,” Kuroko said as he flopped down onto his bed.

Aomine waved off the apology. “Maybe we should just switch families. They might be happier that way. And it would make sleepovers interesting,” he said, and then face-planted into the bed next to Tetsu.

“My mom cooks like me. You should stick to your family,” Kuroko replied, bouncing slightly from the force of Aomine falling onto the bed next to him.

Aomine hummed in agreement, not speaking properly because his face was buried in the comforter and he wasn’t inclined to change that anytime soon.

Kuroko may or may not have been the one to push Aomine off the bed for not properly answering him. But Aomine probably just fell. Without moving himself.

Aomine yelped in surprise and fell to the floor with a loud thump. He considered just lying there, but then he remembered— “Hey, you know what?” he objected loudly. “That’s the second time you’ve done that to me recently, and I’m not gonna take this bullshit anymore.” He got up and tried to look angry, but he just kind of smirked as he walked over to Tetsu and just sat on him. Right on his stomach.

Kuroko felt the air leave him as Aomine’s weight was suddenly crushing him, and he struggled to move out from under him. “Get off of me!” he protested, try to shove Aomine off of the bed again.

“Oh, sorry, is this uncomfortable?” Aomine said with mock sympathy. “You know what else is uncomfortable? The floor.”

“Well, you’re off the floor now. So get off of me. You’re heavy,” he said, still trying to shove at Aomine.

Aomine deflected Tetsu’s attempts to shove at him with one arm. Then he stretched out so that was lying down, lazily draped over Tetsu instead of sitting on him. “How’s this? Personally I’m pretty comfy.”

Kuroko’s voice came out a little muffled because with Aomine laying on top of him, his face was pressed against Aomine’s chest. “Aomine-kun, get off.”

“Mmmmmmmm… Nah.”

Well, he’d tried. It was with that thought in mind that he tilted his head to a better angle and bit Aomine’s chest.

“OW what the _fuck???”_ Aomine exclaimed, rolling off Tetsu so he was lying on his side right next to him instead. He rubbed his skin where Tetsu had fucking _bit him_ , and looked at Tetsu with an expression very close to a pout. “You better not push me off the bed again, this counts as your revenge.”

Just because Aomine had told him not to, he did it again.

At this point, Aomine wasn’t even that surprised. He just sort of half-heartedly said “aaaaaaaah” on the way down and then lay on the floor contemplating his life decisions, and also trying to figure out how he might possibly make Tetsu feel even a little bad for pushing him off the bed. An idea came to him after a few seconds. Aomine adopted a pathetic, sad, tiny voice and said, “Why do you hate me? _Whyyy_ , Tetsuya?”

“Because, Daiki, you crushed me,” Kuroko replied casually, ignoring the speeding up of his heart.

Aomine sighed, sat up, and rested his head and arms on the bed, looking at Tetsu imploringly. “Can I lay on the bed safely now?”

Kuroko pretended to consider it before nodding and scooting over to make room for Aomine, who climbed up to lie beside him.

* * *

Aomine woke up very suddenly in the middle of the night, breathing hard and drenched in a cold sweat. He didn’t recognize the room at first, and almost panicked, but then he felt the warmth right beside him, and looked over to see Tetsu, which made him feel both better and worse at the same time, and he was having a hard time figuring out why. So he was also finding it very difficult to calm down, no matter how carefully he tried to breathe.

“Tetsu,” he said, putting a hand on his shoulder and gently shaking him awake. “Tetsu…”

Kuroko’s eyes slowly opened and he blinked a few times to get Aomine to come into focus. “A-Aomine-ku—” The honorific was cut off by a yawn. “What’s going on?”

“I—I don’t—” He had thought he didn’t know, but the more he watched Tetsu’s face, Tetsu’s sleepy, concerned face, the more he felt a deep relief. And as he relaxed, the nightmare began to come back to him slowly. “I had a… a bad dream.” He suddenly felt stupid. “It’s—it’s nothing, sorry for waking you up, I’ll be fi—” Then he swore as he realized something. “It might have… been a memory?”

There were only two things that could fully wake Kuroko up: coffee, and one of his friends in distress. So, he sat up to face Aomine, ready to listen. “Was I there? If I was I can tell you if it was real or not.”

Aomine studied his face closely, since that seemed to be affecting him _somehow_ at the moment, and he began to feel the memory slipping back into his mind. He nodded vaguely as he saw that Tetsu’s face seemed to be the feature of the memory. “Um… it’s a game. We’re both playing.” He began to hear the cheer of the crowd in his ears, and saw things a little more clearly. “...You’re wearing white and I’m wearing black.” His attention was briefly brought back to reality when he saw Tetsu tense up. “What? What is it?”

“Nothing. It might be nothing. Continue,” Kuroko said, but he had a pretty good idea he knew what Aomine was talking about. The game where he had crushed Kuroko’s team after telling Kuroko that his basketball would never be good enough.

The game in the memory seemed to mostly pass by in a blur, but there were a few key moments that seemed to be standing out. Aomine saw Tetsu looking up at him with more determination and anger than he was used to seeing on a regular basis. And under the weight of that look, Aomine also realized his past self had that same darkness about him as he’d had that day he’d spent all day in bed. Although this time, instead of remaining dull, it seemed to be burning, flames growing with anger as the game went on.

Then the irritation reached a peak, and everything suddenly went crystal clear as Aomine heard himself saying, _“The shadow can never defeat the light. Your basketball will never be good enough to beat me.”_ And Tetsu’s face was utterly broken. And his past self _still didn’t care_. Worse, even—he was _angry_ and lashing out and not caring who got hurt because of it. Not even Tetsu.

That one scene played over and over again in his head, the intensity of it never fading. Aomine’s heart was pounding wildly, and he felt like there wasn’t enough air in the room, and he drew his knees up to his chest and hid his face in them, swearing intermittently. “Shit. Shit. Why would I—why— _fuck_.”

“Aomine-kun?” Kuroko leaned closer, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Daiki, calm down. It’s okay. What do you remember?”

Aomine lifted his head slightly to look at Tetsu, and for once, the sound of Tetsu saying his name actually slowed his heart rate. His face was calm, and close, and not in pain, and Aomine fixed his eyes there, using Tetsu as an anchor in his stormy mind. Eventually, he found the words to explain. “I… said… I said such stupid, _shitty_ things. To _you_. And I just… didn’t care.”

Kuroko tried to keep the sadness off of his face as he remembered that. He wasn’t sure if it was working, but he knew Aomine didn’t need to see that right now. “I... yes. That happened. That was a few months ago, during our Inter-High game against each other.”

Aomine saw the subtle shift in Tetsu’s expression—well, maybe he hadn’t, maybe he was just jumping to conclusions in his current state of mind. Either way, that solidified the fact that what he’d seen had been real, even more than Tetsu’s words did. He hid his face in his knees again. “I was so angry. Why was I so _angry?”_

“Because you were winning,” Kuroko told him, carefully placing a hand on Aomine’s head, running his fingers through his hair to try and calm him down.

Aomine let out an empty laugh. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why the hell would that make me angry?” He sighed in frustration. “Why is the me from a few months ago such a different person that I can’t understand him?”

Kuroko looked torn as he tried to figure out what to say to that. “You know I can’t tell you. You need to remember everything for yourself. Hopefully it will all make sense soon,” Kuroko said, still moving his fingers through Aomine’s hair. He knew it wasn’t fair to Aomine, but he almost didn’t want all of the memories to come back, because he was still worried that as soon as they did, things would go back to the way that they had been. But he knew for Aomine’s sake, they needed to come back. He couldn’t imagine how terrible it must be to have two years of your life taken from you after all.

Aomine hated the idea that it might get worse. But he also hated the idea that nothing made sense at the moment. “Yeah. Hopefully,” he agreed half-heartedly, then took a deep breath and looked back up at Tetsu again. “Sorry for waking you up.”

“It’s okay.” Kuroko gave him a small smile. “I’d rather you wake me up than go through a bad memory alone.”

Aomine smiled back. “Glad you’re here then,” he murmured, then reached up to grab Tetsu’s arm and gently pull it away from his head, so he could hold Tetsu’s hand with both of his. He stared down at it and aimlessly traced lines in his palm and played with his fingers.

Kuroko watched Aomine mess with his hand for a while before speaking up again. “Are you okay though? After that memory?”

Aomine shrugged. The afterimages of the memory were still flashing through his head periodically, and he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be going back to sleep anytime soon, but he didn’t really want to tell Tetsu that. “After a few minutes, they don’t seem as real. I can imagine they happened to someone else… at least for now,” he said, not looking up.

Kuroko moved his hand out of Aomine’s so that he could wrap his arms around him in a hug, resting his head on Aomine’s shoulder. He stayed like that for a minute... then a few more minutes... ‘It was the middle of the night’ would be his justification later for falling asleep on Aomine.

Aomine said Tetsu’s name several times, but got no response. He shifted backwards carefully so that he could lean against the headboard of the bed, and so Tetsu was lying in a slightly more normal sleeping position instead of awkwardly sitting up. Aomine spent the next couple of hours stroking Tetsu’s hair and feeling him breathe and letting the bad memory fade from his mind, until he eyelids felt heavy and he finally drifted off to sleep.

Kuroko got up the next morning and tried to step off the bed to go get coffee, but just sort of ended up rolling off of it and falling on the floor instead.

Aomine stirred at the movement, and then cracked his eyes open at the loud thump. “...Tetsu?”

“I’m on the floor,” Kuroko answered, sounding as if he was just figuring this out himself.

Aomine propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at him, trying to suppress a chuckle. “What are you doing down there?”

“I don’t know,” Kuroko said, pouting at Aomine and holding his arms up towards him to ask for Aomine to pick him up.

Compelled entirely by the cuteness, Aomine also rolled out of bed and grabbed Tetsu’s hands to pull him to a sitting position, then scooped him up off the ground. “Where to?” he said with a grin, as if he didn’t know exactly what Tetsu desperately needed at the moment.

“To the kitchen!” Kuroko declared, but was pointing at his window instead of his door.

Between Tetsu’s ridiculous bedhead, sleepy voice, and complete lack of proper brain function, Aomine absolutely could not prevent the giggle fit he proceeded to have. He just barely avoided dropping Tetsu as he headed for his bedroom door.

“Daiki, will you make my coffee for me?” Kuroko asked, resting his head on Aomine’s chest.

“Anything for you, Tetsu,” Aomine replied as he made his way down the stairs, his tone not quite as facetious as he’d intended it to be.


	8. Jet Pack Blues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _She’s in a long black coat tonight_   
>  _Waiting for me in the downpour outside_   
>  _She’s singing “Baby, come home” in a melody of tears_   
>  _While the rhythm of the rain keeps time_
> 
> _I remember_
> 
> “Jet Pack Blues” by Fall Out Boy

The memories that started coming to Aomine after that night weren’t quite as intense, but they came much more frequently. And it was becoming increasingly more difficult for him to recover, as if they were piling on top of him, adding more and more weight each time. So the aftereffects seemed to stick with him longer, some of them almost becoming permanent.

One morning, he woke up to a phone call from Satsuki, and upon hearing her loud, bubbly voice, immediately snapped at her and then hung up. He begrudgingly apologized later when she brought it up, but refused to say anything else about it.

Later that week, he came home from practice one day and went directly to bed, only moving when his mother came to wake him up for dinner.

“Daiki, I’ve been trying to call you down for ages! The food is on the table,” she said, barging into his room after knocking loudly several times with no response.

Aomine finally stirred from his nap and lifted his head to squint tiredly at her. “What the hell, Mom? I’m trying to sleep.”

“It’s dinnertime, and you’ve been sleeping since you got home from school, that’s what!” she snapped. But then her voice softened. “Is everything alright? Is it your memories?”

Aomine paused. He knew Tetsu had told him he should talk about this. But he felt so heavy, and it wasn’t just the pull of sleep—it was a weight on his chest that made everything much more difficult than it should have been. So at the moment, opening up to someone felt like far too daunting a task. “I’m fine. Leave me alone. I’ll eat later,” he said curtly, then buried his face in the pillow again.

He woke up again in the middle of the night to see a plate of food set on his bedside table. He ate most of it, and then slept until morning.

There was another day when he was at Maji Burger with Tetsu, with half of his burgers sitting still-wrapped before him, picking unenthusiastically at his fries. He was vaguely aware of Tetsu saying something, but his mind had wandered off and he just sort of hummed in response every once in a while. At some point he suddenly realized Tetsu had stopped talking, and turned to look at him to find him staring back. “...What?”

“Nothing,” Kuroko mumbled, looking down at his milkshake. Aomine wasn’t listening anyway, so it didn’t really matter.

Aomine felt a little pang of guilt, but he didn’t say anything except, “Do you want any of these?” He gestured to the untouched burgers and half a pile of fries.

Kuroko shook his head. “No thank you. I’m fine with just this,” he said before taking a sip of his milkshake (which he didn’t end up finishing that day).

Aomine shrugged and got up to go throw the food away, if only to have a moment’s respite from the look on Tetsu’s face.

* * *

As much as Aomine had been wishing for all of this to be over already, he couldn’t have possibly prepared for the day it happened. There was no warning, and nothing unusual about the situation—he was sprawled on his bed, head turned away from the late afternoon sun shining through his window, and he got a text from Tetsu.

_Do you want to play some one-on-one later?_

He read the text, then read it again. Then he dropped his phone and forgot about it completely as his vision went white, reality disintegrating and falling far beyond his reach as he was bombarded with memories—with images and sounds and smells and tastes and touches and emotions, so many different sensations all at once, prying open his mind and crowding into all the little gaps where he’d forgotten things. It was as though he’d gone from being stranded in the desert to being trapped under a waterfall—refreshing at first, but then he began to drown.

He wasn’t quite sure how much time passed. When he regained awareness, he was curled up on his bed, gasping for breath, his eyes squeezed shut and his hands clamped over his ears. A whimper slipped out of him and he winced as it grated past his raw throat. It took him a while before he could convince his muscles to relax enough for him to open his eyes, stretch his legs, and remove his hands from his ears. The sun had set, he noticed as he turned to look out the window. Then his gaze drifted to the rest of his room, and he felt a sense of relief as everything finally looked familiar—he actually remembered leaving that pair of shoes in the corner after summer break, and hanging up that new poster of Mai-chan on the ceiling above his bed several weeks ago, and that one time near the end of middle school when he accidentally created that dent in the wall by throwing a basketball a little too recklessly.

His phone buzzed again, drawing his attention.

_Aomine-kun?_

Upon opening the message from Tetsu and thinking about him in the context of his newly regained memories, an unpleasant realization came to him, and suddenly his insides were aflame with rage.

_yeah sounds good. ill be at the court in ten minutes,_ he texted back, leaving his house immediately.

_See you soon._ Kuroko texted back. He quickly changed into an outfit more suitable for playing basketball—a pair of shorts and one of Aomine’s t-shirts—grabbed his gym bag, and headed out.

Aomine waited at their usual basketball court, hands balled into fists in his pockets, staring at the ground.

Kuroko showed up at the court and smiled at Aomine before he noticed the look on Aomine’s face. “Aomine-kun?” he said, slowly approaching him.

With a wry smile beneath empty eyes, Aomine replied, “Huh. I’m a little surprised you showed up.”

Kuroko frowned at that. “I’m the one who asked you to play. Why wouldn’t I show up?” he asked, tilting his head.

“Well, you know, the way this whole amnesia thing has made me basically relive the past two years of my life in the last few weeks… I figured the pattern would continue. So then the next thing that happens—” Suddenly, the casual front turned into thinly veiled anger. “—is you _fucking disappear_.”

Kuroko looked a little taken aback by this, for a moment his mind just brought up misdirection and wondered why Aomine would be angry at him about that, but then it clicked—Aomine knew they weren’t friends anymore. An icy dread seized his stomach, but he spoke as calmly as he could: “If I were planning on disappearing I wouldn’t keep hanging out with you. I’m here right now.”

“Yeah, okay, but for how much longer? How much longer until all of my _issues_ are too much of a pain to deal with? If I hadn’t just remembered _everything all at once_ —” Aomine’s voice broke slightly against his will, and he had to stop and take a deep breath before continuing. “—how many more of my bad days would you have actually stuck around for?”

The insinuation that he would just leave was like a punch to the face. Kuroko’s eyes were wide as he replied, “I—what? All of them. I...” _Everything_. He remembered everything, and now he was mad at Kuroko, and Kuroko didn’t know what to do. Was his second chance with his best friend being taken away from him so soon? He’d tried his best in middle school, but maybe he was supposed to have done more? Was that why Aomine was mad? “I just told you a week ago that I would be here for you,” he said quietly.

Aomine let out a loud, humorless laugh. “Right. A week ago. When I didn’t remember half of middle school. What were you trying to do, exactly? Were you hoping that if you were nice enough this time around, it would make up for before?”

“What? No! That’s not—I told you, Momoi-san said that you seemed sad and that I should try to hang out with you, and—and I wasn’t going to do that much, because I didn’t think you’d be happy about it when you remembered everything, but... it was nice having you back.” Kuroko could already feel his composure slipping away, his usual blank mask crumbling to reveal how distressed he was by the situation.

As far as Aomine was concerned, Tetsu had just confirmed exactly what he’d thought. He felt a deep stab of betrayal, but he’d be damned if he let it show, instead hiding it under his anger. “Yeah. Yeah, I bet it was nice. It worked out pretty well for you, huh? Just by chance, I fell on my stupid fucking head and lost my memories, so you could get a second chance with the version of me you actually gave a shit about. Yeah. I’m really _fucking_ happy for you.”

Kuroko racked his brain, searching for the right thing to say—he wouldn’t just stand there speechless and watch Aomine walk away again. He _couldn’t_. So he took a hesitant step forward. “I have cared about you since the day I met you. That has not changed,” he said firmly, despite the tears starting to form in his eyes.

Aomine wanted _so badly_ to believe Tetsu. He wanted to have everything that they’d had together since he’d woken up in the hospital missing two years of his life. But the problem was, “everything” included his past self—and after all the shit he had been through, he knew he could _never_ be that person again. He would _never_ have any of that again, so how _dare_ Tetsu try to act like he could? He began to yell at him. “Then why did you _leave?_ Why—why wasn’t I good enough? What happened to always being there for me?” 

“I said as long as you wanted me to be there,” Kuroko whispered, a few tears falling as he took another step closer.

“Well I DON’T!” Aomine shouted, meeting Tetsu’s tearful gaze with a fiery glare.

Kuroko stumbled backwards at that, and honestly it would have hurt less if Aomine had just punched him. “I—” The words caught in his throat. There was nothing left to say. He had failed.

Aomine turned around and, with his back to Tetsu, repeated it: “I _don’t_.”

It felt like he was breaking into a million pieces. He was losing Aomine again. He felt tears on his face, but couldn’t focus on them, because all that was going through his head was _“I don’t”_ over and over and he was _losing Aomine again_. “Okay,” he said quietly. “I’ll just... I’ll go then. I’m sorry.” He looked at Aomine for a moment longer before turning and walking off the court with no real destination in mind.

Aomine began walking when he heard Tetsu leaving, and didn’t look back. When he got home, he lay on his bed for the rest of the evening and night, staring blankly at the wall until he eventually fell asleep.

* * *

Kuroko ended up at Kagami’s apartment, knocking on his door without even being sure of how he managed to get there.

Kagami was in the middle of making himself enough food to feed a small family when he heard someone at the door. Quickly moving his food off of the heat, he opened the door, and for the second time in his life, he found himself being hugged by a crying Kuroko. “Kuroko? What happened?”

“Aomine-kun said that he doesn’t want to be my friend anymore.”

Kagami could feel rage building up inside of him. What the _fuck_ was wrong with Aomine? Why the hell would he push away someone who was practically betting his happiness on his fucking health? “I’m gonna beat some sense into him.” Kagami didn’t care that he was still wearing an apron. He was going to hunt Aomine down, _now_. Kagami pushed Kuroko away from his chest and started marching out of his apartment. “You stay here. I’ll be back later.”

“Kagami-kun, no!” Kuroko grabbed Kagami’s arm to try to stop him, but ended up being half-dragged out into the hall instead as he tried to dig his heels into the ground to stop their progress. “Please don’t!”

“Why the hell shouldn’t I? He’s being an ass to you and you’ve spent the last few weeks helping him through a fucking injury!” Kagami kept going, ignoring Kuroko’s attempts to stop him.

“Because he remembered everything, and so now he doesn’t want to be my friend,” Kuroko said sadly, still trying to restrain Kagami.

“Then even more reason to beat him up. If he’s back to being his stupid angsty self and can’t see how good of a friend he’s got, then he deserves it.” Kagami was almost to the stairs, Kuroko still attempting to stop him by grinding his heels into the ground.

“Then stay because I don’t want to be alone right now,” Kuroko tried, looking up at Kagami pleadingly.

Kagami stopped at that. He looked back at Kuroko, meeting his gaze. “Fine,” he conceded, “but I’m still beating him up at some point.” He walked back down the hall, opening his unlocked front door and dropping down onto his couch. “So what happened?”

“He asked me what happened to being there for him. I told him that I’d said that I would be as long as he wanted me to be, and he told me he didn’t want me to be,” Kuroko summarized, sitting down next to Kagami.

“That doesn’t convince me that I shouldn’t punch him,” Kagami said under his breath. “He’s being dumb. You’ve been, like, his most supportive friend during all this shit. He’s being dumb,” he repeated.

“He thinks I just did it because I don’t like him as he is now and wanted to be with the version of him that I 'actually care about' apparently. I told him that I’ve cared about him since I met him, but I don’t think he believed me,” Kuroko said sadly. “Maybe it’s because I didn’t do enough to help in middle school? I tried, but... I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t good enough.”

Kagami awkwardly pulled Kuroko into a hug when he noticed tears rolling down his face again. “How the hell did he get that idea? I don’t know exactly what happened in middle school, but knowing you, you probably did all that you could. It’s not your fault.” He patted Kuroko’s back trying to soothe him as best he could.

Kuroko leaned into the hug, sniffling a bit. “He thinks I abandoned him,” Kuroko said quietly, a small sob leaving him.

“Well… did you?” It probably wasn’t the right thing to say to comfort Kuroko, but half-assed lies wouldn’t help either.

“I don’t know! I stopped passing to him when he walked away and told me he didn’t need me anymore, and so then I stopped trying to be his partner because I thought he didn’t want me to be. I started skipping a lot of school, but he was sleeping on the roof anyway. I quit the team, but we weren’t even playing together anymore. Does that count as abandoning? Because apparently he thinks it does.” Kuroko was clinging a bit tighter to Kagami now as he tried to figure it out.

Kagami scrunched his eyebrows together. “Doesn’t that mean _he_ abandoned _you?_ He was the one who started it. How is any of it _your_ fault?”

“That’s why I don’t know. Maybe I was supposed to try harder? He thinks that I gave up on him and abandoned him, and I just... I don’t know. I just want my friend back, and I don’t know what I did that was so wrong that I can’t have him back.”

“Kuroko, it’s not all your fault. How can he expect you to try harder if he didn’t? You’re not the only one in this friendship. You’re not the only one at fault.” Kagami pushed Kuroko away from himself a bit to look him in the eyes. “Stop blaming yourself.”

“If it’s not my fault then why doesn’t Aomine-kun like me anymore?” Kuroko asked shakily, and Kagami didn’t really have an answer for that, because he didn’t know the workings of Aomine Daiki’s mind any better than he did those of Kuroko’s other old teammates. So he just pulled Kuroko back into another hug and let him cry some more.

When the tears finally subsided, Kagami decided to try and distract Kuroko. “You want some food?” he offered, finding a box of tissues and handing them to him.

“Okay,” Kuroko said, letting go of Kagami.

Kagami put the finishing touches on his food and put it all onto one large plate, bringing two smaller plates with him for him and Kuroko. “I hear people eat their sorrows away so have as much as you want.” He handed Kuroko his plate and chopsticks and piled a large amount of food onto his plate.

Kuroko gave Kagami a tiny smile. “I don’t think that works for people who don’t generally eat very much, but I can give it a shot.”

* * *

Dinner at Kagami’s place had helped take Kuroko’s mind off things for awhile, but when he returned home that night, the moment he walked into his room and turned on the light, he was greeted by all the scattered reminders of Aomine, and everything came rushing back.

_“I don’t.”_

Kuroko gritted his teeth against the tears and grabbed armful after armful of stuffed animals off his bed, piling them all into the closet. He did the same with a basketball and several articles of Aomine’s clothing that were strewn about, throwing things onto the pile more and more violently as Aomine’s voice continued to echo in his head.

_“I don’t.”_

He closed the closet door and turned around to check for anything he might have missed. Seeing nothing, he let out a sigh. It was supposed to sound relieved, but ended up turning into a feeble sob as the thought crossed his mind that he wished he could erase Aomine from his mind as easily as he could erase him from his room. 

_“I don’t.”_

A few stray tears had escaped, and Kuroko grabbed the hem of his shirt to wipe at them—and then he suddenly remembered he was still wearing one of Aomine’s t-shirts. He froze for a moment, clenching a fistful of the fabric with a shaking hand, but soon let his arm fall back to his side in defeat. _I’m so stupid,_ he thought, leaning back and letting his head hit the door in frustration.

It was impossible. He could never, ever forget about Aomine. He was an inextricable part of Kuroko’s life—had been since the day they’d met—and Kuroko had given up far too much of himself to Aomine. A closet door wasn’t nearly enough of a shield to prevent him from having to face that fact.

He trudged over to the bed and crawled over to the side where Aomine usually slept, curling up under the blankets and thinking maybe he could pretend Aomine was sleeping beside him. After all, Aomine was present in so many other ways—in the pile of things in the closet, in the scent of the pillow beneath Kuroko’s head, in the large place he claimed in Kuroko’s heart—so he closed his eyes and imagined he was lying in the comfort of Aomine’s warmth.

_“I don’t.”_

He still cried himself to sleep.

* * *

“Dai-chan, why hasn’t Tetsu-kun been around the last few days?” Momoi asked after she’d dragged Aomine out of bed.

“Why are you even here?” Aomine shot back quickly, almost cutting off the end of Satsuki’s question. “I didn’t invite you.”

“Because you said that you’d go shopping with me today. Answer my question,” she replied.

“I don’t remember ever agreeing to that,” Aomine said while sifting through the mounds of clothes on his floor for something clean enough to wear. He still steadfastly ignored the question.

“Aomine-kun, where is Tetsu-kun?” Momoi was starting to get a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach, because she was the reason that Kuroko had even started talking to Aomine again, and if Aomine had hurt him again it would be her fault.

Aomine shrugged, carefully keeping his expression as neutral as possible. “How the hell should I know? You’re the one who keeps tabs on him like a weirdo.”

“Aomine-kun... what happened?” Momoi said slowly, ditching the nickname to convey how serious she was.

“Nothing.” He was only half-heartedly toeing through the clothes on the floor now, not really focused on his original goal at all.

Momoi walked over to him and turned him around so that he was facing her and looked up to meet his eyes. _“What. Happened.”_

Aomine could see the death threat in her eyes and knew it wouldn’t be a good idea to keep avoiding it. “...I remembered.”

“And?” she asked, the feeling in her stomach becoming more prominent.

“And I got fucking pissed, that’s what,” Aomine snapped. “So I told him to fuck off.”

Momoi’s hand connected hard with Aomine’s face. “How dare you?!” she screamed at him. “After all Tetsu-kun has put himself through for you, how fucking dare you do that to him!”

Any protest Aomine might have had at the vicious slap died in his throat. “He was only doing it for the me without memories. He woulda jumped ship the minute I got them all back anyway. What’s the difference?”

Momoi looked ready to both cry and slap him again. “No, he wouldn’t have. He was in pain every single day. For you. Because he thought that as soon as you got your memories back you would leave him behind again, and he didn’t want to lose you a second time. _That’s_ why he was avoiding you the first week. But as soon as I told him that it was making you sad and that it might help you get your memories back, he was ready to talk to you, to do whatever it took, to make sure that you were okay. Tetsu-kun has been through so much shit because of you, and he would be _right_ to tell you to fuck off and never look back at you for what you did to him, but as soon as you needed him he was here for you, so HOW DARE YOU DO THAT TO HIM A SECOND TIME!” she screamed, tears starting to roll down her face.

A part of Aomine was telling him he was in a dangerous position and should probably back down. But the majority of him was confused and angry and very willing to scream right back at Satsuki. “What the hell do you mean ‘a second time’? He’s the one who gave up on me at Teikou! As soon as everything went downhill for me, he just fucking disappeared!”

Momoi gaped in disbelief. “Are you—Daiki, you _idiot!_ You’re either dumber than everyone thought or you do _not_ remember everything, because _you_ were the one who walked away from _him_. And he still chased after you, and came back looking like you had crushed his entire world!” she shouted. “He went to another school with the express purpose of beating you so that just _maybe_ you two could be friends again. Even when you weren’t talking to him and I asked if you two would be friends forever he told me yes, because he cares that much about you! No one, not even _me_ —and I have put up with a lot of your bullshit Daiki— _no one_ has put themselves through more for you than Tetsu-kun has. So, I hope that this time, for his sake, he doesn’t take you back if he gets another chance and you come to your senses and apologize. I hope he tells you to leave him alone so that he can move on with his life, because he fucking deserves it.”

Aomine was definitely more confused than anything now. Because he knew Satsuki, and she would not be saying these kinds of things to him if she didn’t mean them. Something was clearly still wrong with his memory, it _must_ be. “Satsuki, what the _hell_ are you talking abo—”

There was no warning this time—one moment, he was standing across from Satsuki in his room, and the next, he was standing across from—

“Tetsu?” he whispered as the memory began to play out.

Tetsu was gazing steadily up at him. _“You always avert your eyes when you lie to me. ...It’s okay though. You don’t have to now, but if you ever want to talk about it, I’m here.”_ Aomine felt warm. He felt hope, for once, that maybe things weren’t going irrevocably wrong.

And then a new memory came to him that drained the warmth away. They were outside, by a river, and the sky was dark and pouring rain. Tetsu looked so small in his soaked-through shirt, shoulders slightly slouched and his expression openly distressed. And Aomine was… yelling at him?

_“I wish I had been born like you, Tetsu. I could’ve had so much more of a goal in life!”_

_“Passes? To who? Me? I don’t need you, I can score by myself.”_

_“I don’t even remember… how to receive your passes anymore.”_

And Aomine looked at Tetsu, looked him straight in the eye as he said all of this, and watched Tetsu crumble before him, and all he felt was cold and numb. And when Tetsu began to cry, he just turned and walked away without another word. And went home and lay in his wet clothes for hours and thought about nothing, did nothing, felt nothing.

Then the scene switched to Tetsu kneeling on the sidelines of a game and openly sobbing, and Aomine had seen this before, but now he knew _why_ , as the bright red 11-111 on the scoreboard glared over the court and he saw a boy on the losing team crying and looking at Tetsu.

_“He’s my friend,”_ Tetsu’s shaky voice echoed in his head. _“He’s my friend, and we had a promise, and you crushed it!”_

They were all gathered around the still-crying Tetsu in the locker room after the game. No one seemed to have any sympathy left to spare, least of all Aomine. His gaze was numb and distant as he spoke to Tetsu: _“Why should we care about crushing the weak? It’s never going to happen differently, and it’s impossible to have a happy ending, so if that’s what you’re hoping for, you should just give up now.”_

Tetsu quit the team shortly after. Aomine felt nothing.

Reality came back into focus slowly. Aomine shivered with the ghost sensation of rain soaking his clothes, and his hands were shaking. He stared blankly at a spot on the wall just beyond Satsuki, not quite managing to find his voice yet.

Momoi was still fuming as she watched what looked like him regaining memories. “Do you remember now?” she asked, her voice shaking a bit.

Aomine nodded once, vaguely. He began to feel dizzy, and he sat down on the layer of clothes that lined his floor, still staring at nothing and waiting for the world to feel real again.

“Then fix it,” she said coldly, turning on her heel and walking out of his room without a second glance.


	9. Trade Mistakes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I feel marooned in this body_   
>  _Deserted, my organs can go on without me._   
>  _You can't fly these wings._   
>  _You can't sleep in this box with me._
> 
> “Trade Mistakes” by Panic! at the Disco

Aomine split off from the rest of the team the moment they got to the hot spring. Ideally, he wouldn’t have been there at all, but Satsuki threatened Mai-chan again, and, well… that was his weakness. Now here he was, wandering through the bathhouse building, hoping he wouldn’t run into anyone.

So of course, it was barely twenty minutes later when he turned a corner and saw Tetsu lying on a bench with a washcloth over his eyes.

Aomine stopped and stared. He could just walk away. He could just turn around, and walk away, and not deal with this right now, because he wasn’t really sure how. But he happened to have brought a bottle of Pocari along with him, so he found himself approaching anyway. “Here you go,” he said quietly, placing the bottle on the bench next to Tetsu and then inspecting the nearby vending machine to buy himself another drink.

“Thank you Ka—” Kuroko lifted the washcloth to see Aomine standing there and froze. He wasn’t sure what to do with this situation. Aomine had told him to get out of his life, but here he was, giving Kuroko a drink.

Aomine silently pressed a button, waited for his chosen drink to be vended, and took a sip. Then he finally said, “Yo, Tetsu.”

Kuroko hesitated a moment before answering. “Hello, Aomine-kun,” he said, before picking up the bottle and taking a small sip. 

Aomine leaned back on the wall opposite Tetsu. It had been a few weeks since he’d last seen him, so he had quite a few things he wanted to say, but there was only one topic of conversation he could think of at the moment that didn’t make him feel vaguely nauseous. “So. Satsuki got us early copies of the brackets for the Winter Cup,” he said, only looking directly at Tetsu a few times as he spoke.

_Ah._ So that was why Aomine was talking to him. “Oh? I’m assuming that you wanted to tell me about a specific one.” 

Aomine took a sip of his drink, then said bluntly, “Touou’s facing Seirin in the first round.”

Kuroko’s eyes widened just a bit in surprise at that news, but after a moment, he shrugged his shoulders. “It doesn’t matter, really. Whenever we play you, we’re going to win.”

Aomine raised an eyebrow. “Unless you’ve got something new up your sleeve, the ones winning this game are going to be—” He cut off as he noticed movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to look down the hallway.

Kagami had walked back in with Kuroko’s drink, and when he saw Aomine standing there, _having the nerve to try to talk to Kuroko again_ , he promptly forgot about the drink, actually dropping it, then ran forward and let his fist connect _hard_ with Aomine’s jaw.

He didn’t even spare Aomine a second glance afterwards either. He walked over to Kuroko, grabbed him by the arm, and started pulling him away. “Come on, Kuroko. We’re leaving this place. Maybe even the _country_ if it’ll get him to finally fuck off,” he said, dragging Kuroko, who was staring between Kagami and Aomine with utter shock.

Aomine stumbled backwards when Kagami hit him, and his first instinct was to get really fucking pissed and try to hit him back… but he didn’t. Instead he watched the two of them walk away, rubbing his jaw with an irritated look on his face. “Hope you’re ready to lose, Eyebrows. You’re not making it past the first round of the Winter Cup,” he called after them.

Kagami spun around, which kind of flung Kuroko a bit since he’d been dragging him by his arm. “If you think I’m going to let you win, especially after I had this idiot at my house crying over you _twice_ now, you’ve got another thing coming.”

Kuroko looked mildly horrified by what Kagami was saying. “Kagami-kun—”

“Don’t you dare tell me not to. It was that or punch him again, and if I do it one more time, I won’t stop. And then I can’t kick his ass on the court because he’ll be in the hospital,” Kagami retorted.

Just the idea of Tetsu crying to Kagami made Aomine hate the guy even more. But he settled for a scowl and a sharp “Whatever,” because he was not interested in starting shit with someone who had just threatened to put him in the hospital. He wasn’t _that_ stupid. He turned and walked away in the opposite direction of Kagami and Tetsu.

* * *

“Daiki, did you fix things with Tetsu-kun?” Momoi asked as they left the hot springs.

Aomine glared at the ground. “I gave him Pocari and then Eyebrows threatened to put me in the hospital. So, no, I didn’t.”

“You thought that giving him Pocari was going to fix everything? He could buy that for a dollar. I think you need to put a bit more effort into it,” Momoi told him, seeming to notice the growing bruise on Aomine’s face for the first time. “Did Kagamin hit you?” she asked, not really sounding mad about it.

Aomine scowled and rubbed his jaw self-consciously. “None of this would’ve happened if you had just let me stay home. I _told_ you this would be a bad idea.”

“None of this would have happened if _you_ hadn’t been so mean to Tetsu-kun,” Momoi countered with narrowed eyes. “I already blame myself enough for this without you trying to make me feel guilty about trying to fix it.”

Before his accident, Aomine probably would have continued arguing until he made Satsuki angry enough to leave, and then returned to whatever he had been doing (most likely napping). But now, after everything that had happened… Well, he had never hated himself more. He felt zero motivation or desire to defend himself at this point. Still refusing to meet Satsuki’s gaze, he muttered, “...Yeah. Sorry.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and moved to walk ahead of her.

Momoi stopped walking for a moment, a look of surprise on her face before she quickly started walking again. “Why don’t you just call him?” she asked.

“Yeah, maybe,” Aomine replied noncommittally, his voice a dull monotone.

“Daiki... you still care about Tetsu-kun... right?” Momoi asked hesitantly.

Aomine inhaled deeply, an uncomfortable burning sensation shooting through his chest as he slowed to a stop. Of course he did. Of course he cared. But if he said that out loud, it would be so much more permanent. And it would make it _so much harder_ to forget about Tetsu if things never worked out between them. He turned and finally looked at Satsuki. “Do me a favor… and don’t ask me that until after I’ve figured out how to fix this,” he said, his voice just barely under his control. “...Please.”

Momoi opened her mouth to argue, but decided against it. “Okay,” she agreed quietly.

* * *

It had taken Kagami a while to cool his head when they all returned to the locker room for halftime during the match versus Touou. He’d hadn’t anticipated just how _furious_ he’d become just walking onto the court and seeing Aomine’s stupid face, and how much it would affect the way he played. He’d gotten even more worked up than usual, and he thought he might have _literally_ been seeing red for the last few minutes of the second quarter.

He sat on the ground, closed his eyes, and leaned his head back against the cool wall for a minute. When he opened his eyes again, his head was slightly clearer, and the first thing he noticed was that where Kuroko had been sitting nearby, there was now only his jacket laying crumpled on the ground. Kagami was immediately concerned, and he forgot his fatigue as he grabbed the jacket and left to look for Kuroko.

When he finally found him outside, he threw the jacket over his head and said, “You’re gonna get cold, idiot.”

Kuroko startled a little at the feeling of something landing on him, but relaxed as soon as he realized it was just Kagami. “I was going to come back soon, so I think I would have been fine.” Kuroko replied, pulling the jacket off of his head and putting it on properly.

Kagami rolled his eyes. “Whatever you say.” He paused for a moment, a little hesitant to disturb the light-hearted atmosphere, but… he figured that if _he_ was getting this worked up about having to face Aomine, it must be even worse for Kuroko. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” Kuroko lied with a tiny reassuring smile, pulling the jacket tighter around himself.

Kagami sighed. “Look, I know that you won’t let it interfere with your _playing_ , but I don’t believe you.”

Kuroko shrugged. He hadn’t really been expecting Kagami to believe him. “It doesn’t really matter,” he said half-heartedly.

Kagami narrowed his eyes. “Yes, it does.”

“Can it matter when we don’t have a game to play?” Kuroko tried.

“It matters _now_.” Kagami was absolutely _not_ going to let Kuroko talk himself out of this one.

“Fine. I’m not okay. Are you happy now? But we have a game to play, so there isn’t much I can do about it.”

No, he was not happy, he hated seeing Kuroko like this. But that’s why Kagami needed to know whether he could help fix it. He thought for a moment, then asked, “So… will winning this game make you more okay?”

Kuroko shrugged again. “I don’t know. I’m more hoping that it will make Aomine-kun more okay. I just... I just want to see him playing basketball with a smile. At least one more time. Even if we can’t be friends anymore, I want him to be happy.”

Kagami was speechless for a moment. It seemed every time he thought he knew just how strongly Kuroko felt about Aomine, he was proven wrong. Despite all his sarcasm and blunt manner of speaking, Kuroko was basically goodness incarnate as far as Kagami was concerned. So he didn’t understand why someone like him cared so much about a self-absorbed asshole like Aomine, who apparently had no compunctions about just throwing Kuroko away like he wasn’t anything special.

...No, he didn’t understand _why_ , but he thought that maybe he finally understood exactly _what_ Kuroko felt. “...You love him,” he said matter-of-factly.

Kuroko looked a little surprised by this statement. “I thought you knew that already,” he replied, tone a bit sad. “But it doesn’t matter, because he doesn’t care about me anymore. So, let’s move on and just play the game.” He forced a small smile.

Kagami looked at him for a moment, really wanting to assure him that everything would be fine, even though he didn’t really know that. But first of all, Kuroko would never buy it and it wouldn’t make him feel better, and second of all, Kagami didn’t _want_ to lie to him. He went with his next best option. “...Things might not change even if we win,” he said, putting a hand on Kuroko’s shoulder, “but nothing will change if we lose.” Then he finally returned Kuroko’s smile. “So, let’s win.”

This time the smile that Kuroko gave Kagami was genuine. “That seems like a good plan,” he agreed, starting to walk back towards their locker room. Riko would kill them if they showed up late after all.  

Around the corner, just out of sight but still within earshot of where they had been standing, Aomine had just lost his ability to stand. He leaned against the wall, and then his knees gave out so he also slowly slid down until he was sitting on the ground.

“Fuck.” His eyes burned and vision went out of focus, so he hid his face in his hands. He tried to breathe slowly, but his heart kept pounding faster and he shuddered with every breath. “Fuck.” He squeezed his eyes shut but the tears fell anyway. He had fucked up. He had fucked up _so badly._ And he had no idea if he’d ever be able to fix it. He wasn’t sure whether he even had the right to _try_. But he wanted to. He wanted everything to be better already, because he couldn’t take this anymore. He just wanted… “Tetsu.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I may never sleep tonight,_   
>  _As long as you're still burning bright._   
>  _If I could trade mistakes for sheep,_   
>  _Count me away before you sleep._   
>  _I'll stay awake till I trade my mistakes_   
>  _Or they fade away_
> 
> “Trade Mistakes” by Panic! at the Disco


	10. The Last Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the last time you tell me I've got it wrong  
>  _This is the last time I say it's been you all along_  
>  This is the last time I let you in my door  
>  _This is the last time, I won't hurt you anymore_
> 
> “The Last Time” by Taylor Swift and Gary Lightbody

The next day, Kuroko pulled out his phone and stared at Aomine’s contact for a while, debating whether it was worth it or not. There were plenty of other people that could teach him how to shoot, but none of them were as good as Aomine. And... maybe he was still hoping that things could be fixed between them. Realistically, he didn’t think that would happen, but he wouldn’t know if he didn’t try. With that thought in mind he pressed call. And almost immediately hung up. He took a deep breath, glared at his phone and tried again, making himself hold it to his ear this time.

Aomine stared at the name lighting up the screen of his phone. He stared, and considered not answering, but deep down he knew that he would, because it was Tetsu. He picked up and said as casually as he could manage, “Hey.”

“Hello,” Kuroko said quietly, a little surprised that Aomine had answered him. “I... I know you didn’t want to see me anymore, but I needed your help with something. Do you think you could meet me?”

 _That’s not true!_ Aomine wanted to shout at him. But that wouldn’t fix anything. “Um. Yeah, okay.” His voice came out much weaker than he intended, so he cleared his throat before continuing. “Where?”

“The street ball court we usually go to?” He wasn’t sure why he said it as a question, probably because he was expecting Aomine to back out as soon as he heard that it was about basketball. Honestly he hadn’t expected to make it this far into the conversation.

Aomine nodded, completely forgetting that Tetsu couldn’t see him. “I can be there in ten minutes.”

“Alright. I’ll see you soon then.” He hung up and let out a shaky breath before heading out.

A short while later, Aomine was standing on the court, half-heartedly dribbling a ball and taking the occasional shot while he waited for Tetsu. If this had to do with basketball, he might as well warm up a bit. If not… well, basketball calmed his nerves a little, at least.

Kuroko arrived shortly after, and was a bit surprised to find Aomine already using a basketball, but it was a pleasant surprise. Maybe losing had actually done something for him then. “Aomine-kun,” he said to alert the other to his presence.

Aomine hadn’t heard him coming, but at this point in his life he was constantly in a state of expecting Tetsu to show up at any moment, so he wasn’t surprised. “Yo, Tetsu.”

“You look tired,” Kuroko observed, trying and failing to not let his concern show.

Aomine didn’t even consider denying it, not to Tetsu. He always knew. “Yeah. I… haven’t slept much, since the game. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to deal with this whole ‘losing’ thing.” He laughed at himself a little. “Guess it’s harder than I thought it’d be.”

“You always were a sore loser,” Kuroko replied, holding out his hands for the basketball.

“Oi,” Aomine objected, passing to him. “Am _not_.”

“You broke my coffee table one time over Monopoly,” Kuroko reminded him, shooting the ball. He missed, but that was why he was here in the first place.

Aomine did recall that day, and how eternally grateful he had been that Tetsu’s parents liked him enough to not kick him out of their house permanently for that. “Yeah, well… you still suck at shooting,” he replied, watching the ball bounce off the backboard and moving to catch the rebound.

“I know. I wanted you to teach me. You’re the best shooter that I know,” Kuroko replied.

Aomine tossed the ball back to him with a carefully neutral face to mask his emotions, but they only kept intensifying while he was around Tetsu, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could cope. “Why—why me? Why would you want me?” He almost ended the sentence there, but suddenly realized how pathetic it sounded and quickly added, “To teach you.”

“Like I said, you’re the best shooter I know. Midorima-kun is the only one who might be better, but he specializes in one type of shot, which I don’t think I have a chance at learning,” Kuroko replied, picking up the ball and trying again.

Aomine didn’t really know what else to say at the moment, so he watched Tetsu carefully as he took the shot, and noticed a particularly crucial flaw in his form. So when he grabbed the rebound again, instead of passing, he walked over to Tetsu with the ball and mimicked a shooting posture. “Look, if you hold it like this, it’s a better angle to get the most power from your wrist. Here, try it,” he said, handing the ball to Tetsu and carefully not thinking about anything but the sport.

Kuroko took the ball and mimicked Aomine’s stance. “Like this?” he asked, glancing at the other when he thought he had it right.

“Mm… close,” Aomine said, reaching forward to physically adjust the angle of Tetsu’s arm before he could really think about what he was doing. “More like… this. And then your wrist is like this,” he added, nudging Tetsu’s hand into position. And then he looked down and met Tetsu’s gaze and realized what he was doing, and immediately backed off, heart racing. “Uhhh yeah, so, if you try it like that, it should be easier.”

Kuroko really hoped that he wasn’t blushing. Or that it was at least dark enough outside that Aomine wouldn’t notice if he was. “Okay.” He tried, and it still didn’t really work, but he was closer this time. It took several tries, but he did make it once eventually—more out of luck than actual good aim, but he still got a look of pride on his face because it was his first time making a basket.

Aomine had been kind of doing okay focusing on basketball, he really had, because he loved basketball and he had a lot to say on the subject, and it had sufficed to distract him so far. But then Tetsu made a basket, and Aomine turned to say “nice job”, but the words died in his throat because _fuck, there’s Tetsu. He’s really here, he’s right here in front of me, and he’s making that adorable face, and he’s so close_ —and Aomine was barely aware of stepping forward, he couldn’t tear his gaze away from Tetsu’s eyes, except to look at his lips, and then he leaned down and grabbed a fistful of his jacket and pulled him close to kiss him softly.

Kuroko automatically kissed back, wrapping his arms around Aomine’s shoulders to pull him even closer and standing on his tiptoes before he could even think about it. And then he remembered what had happened between them, and pulled back enough to look at Aomine questioningly. “But... I thought...” He wasn’t even sure how he wanted to phrase that question.

“I was wrong,” Aomine said quickly, letting the words fall out while he still had the courage to say them. “I was wrong. I didn’t remember everything. Not until later. I didn’t remember all the times that I… I pushed you away. And by the time I did, it—” His voice broke and he took a deep breath before continuing. “—it was too late. I fucked it up. I’m sorry,” he said, dropping to a whisper by the end, and then hanging his head because he couldn’t look Tetsu in the eye.

“It wasn’t too late, and it still isn’t,” Kuroko told him, removing his arms from around Aomine so that he could gently lift his head up to meet his eyes. “It’s not too late,” he reiterated once they were making eye contact.

Aomine couldn’t speak, couldn’t _react_ , all he could do was stare at Tetsu and try not to cry. And it seemed he was going to fail at one of those things as tears began to well up in his eyes. He started shaking his head and his grip on Tetsu’s jacket loosened. “You… shouldn’t… I don’t… I don’t _deserve_ —” He cut himself off and bit the inside of his cheek in an attempt to ward off the tears.

Kuroko reached up and wiped away Aomine’s tears with his thumbs. “I am the only one who gets to decide if you deserve my forgiveness since it is mine to give, and I think that you are plenty deserving of it.”

Aomine looked at him for a second longer, then decided that even if it turned out that this was too good to be true, he would hold onto this moment for as long as he could have it. He wrapped his arms around Tetsu and held him close, pressing a kiss to the top of his head and then murmuring close to his ear. “I’m not gonna hurt you anymore. I never wanna lose you again. ...I love you.”

Kuroko’s eyes widened a bit at that, but then a smile formed on his face as he pulled Aomine closer to him, resting his head on Aomine’s chest where he could hear his rocketing heartbeat. “I love you, too,” he said quietly.

When Aomine finally processed Tetsu’s reply, and realized that he was still here, all of this was happening for real, and he wasn’t about to just wake up from a dream or a memory, he started smiling widely, and he let out a giddy little laugh. He pulled back a bit, kissing Tetsu’s temple on the way, and backed out of Tetsu’s arms so he could hold his hands. “So, um… Are we okay?” he asked, still half-smiling, but a little more serious.

Kuroko smiled back and nodded. “Yes. I think we’re okay,” he replied, standing on his tiptoes to kiss the tip of Aomine’s nose.

Aomine felt himself begin to blush, but as Tetsu pulled back, he managed to lean forward and steal a peck on the lips in return.

Kuroko smiled brightly up at Aomine. “So... any more advice on how to make another shot that goes in?” he asked, remembering why they were there in the first place.

Aomine smiled down at him for a moment longer before he looked around for the forgotten basketball, reluctantly letting go of Tetsu’s hands to pick it up. He hummed in thought as he dribbled back towards Tetsu for a few steps and then passed to him—and suddenly had an idea. “Hey… you pass really well, right, so... what if you shot the same way you pass?”

“You think that this is going to go into a basket?” Kuroko asked, aiming an ignite pass kai at Aomine.

Aomine was a bit taken aback, but his body reacted easily, without thought, and he caught the pass. He grinned. “Well, why not? Pretend you’re passing to the basket.” He returned the ball to Tetsu. “Try it.”

Kuroko frowned and did that, causing it to bounce off the headboard and come right back at him. Luckily he ducked in time to avoid being decapitated by a basketball. “That didn’t work,” he said flatly.

Aomine tried not to laugh as he said, “Well _yeah_ , you can’t pass to the basket exactly the same way you’d pass to a person.” He jogged to retrieve the ball and gave it to Tetsu, then adjusted his arms a bit. “Here, maybe if we try it like this…”

* * *

Luckily, Seirin was a fairly small school, so it didn’t take Aomine long to find the gym in which the basketball team practiced. He walked slowly up to the propped-open doors and stood just outside them, squinting into the gym—and spotted Tetsu doing cool-down exercises with the rest of his team. He smiled fondly and leaned against the doorframe to wait for him to be done.

Unfortunately, Kuroko and Kagami spotted Aomine at the same time. “Kagami-kun,” Kuroko said warningly, but Kagami was already moving, and punched Aomine in the same place as last time.

“That’s to make sure you don’t do any of that shit again. I don’t want to ever see Kuroko crying over your sorry ass again,” Kagami threatened just as Kuroko caught up and managed to get in between them to prevent a fight from breaking out.

“Aomine-kun, let’s get you to the nurse’s office so that you can get some ice for your face,” he suggested to try and defuse the situation.

Aomine glared at Kagami and was contemplating the pros and cons of punching him back before Tetsu came to stand between them. Because yes, he probably did deserve that. But he was also pretty tired of getting hit in the face. “Yeah, sounds good, let’s go. Just the sight of Eyebrows’ dumb face is pissing me off,” he said with a scowl.

Kuroko placed a hand on Kagami’s chest to keep him from moving forward to try and punch Aomine again, giving the redhead a stern look.

Aomine narrowed his eyes and took Tetsu’s other hand to pull him away from Kagami. “C’mon, Tetsu, you’ve already got a dog, you can’t just start picking up strays off the street,” he said, half-glaring and half-smirking at Kagami.

“The fuck did you just say about me?!” Kagami shouted, crowding in on Aomine, which had Kuroko kind of squished between the two of them mumbling small protests.

Aomine looked around in mock confusion. “Huh. Tetsu, is Nigou around? I keep hearing this really obnoxious barking sound.”

“Aomine-kun, please stop.” Kuroko’s voice was muffled by Aomine’s chest since he was still sandwiched between the two of them.

“You piece of shit. Kuroko, you’ve got terrible taste in guys.” Kagami said, pulling back his fist to punch Aomine again.

Aomine dodged the swing this time—he had paid his dues, he didn’t owe anyone a free punch anymore. Laughing, he took Tetsu’s hand again and ran off, dragging him along. “Shit, Tetsu, where the hell is the nurse’s office?” he said, suddenly realizing he had no idea where he was going and slowing to let Tetsu lead the way instead.

Kagami went back into the gym to get the rest of the team. “Guys, Aomine’s here,” he announced.

Most of the team seemed confused, a few were surprised, but no one seemed to care very much.

“Um… so…?” Furihata spoke up.

“He’s dating Kuroko,” Kagami said solemnly.

A sudden intense aura filled the entire gym. Riko smiled at him sweetly. “Is that so, Kagami-kun? Well, if you’ve had that information this whole time—” Her demeanor became demonic. “— _why didn’t you tell us earlier???”_

“I—uh—” Kagami looked around for any kind of escape. “—figured Kuroko wanted his privacy? But now the dick is _here_ and he’s made Kuroko cry like three times. At least. They’re in the nurse’s office.”

“Well, boys,” Riko said, looking around at the team, most of which looked like they had just gained the ability to breathe fire and shoot lasers from their eyes, “shall we give Aomine-kun a nice, warm welcome when he returns?”

“It’s only fair,” Hyuuga replied, watching the door as if Aomine would be brought through it by sheer the force of his will.

After a few minutes, Aomine walked back through the gym doors, one hand laced with Tetsu’s, and the other holding an ice pack up to his cheek. He had been smiling, but the moment they crossed the threshold into the gym, he felt like he had walked into an inferno. He looked away from Tetsu… and very suddenly feared for his life as he saw what looked like the entire Seirin team glaring at him. “Uh… hi?” he said with a nervous laugh.

“So... we hear that you’re dating our Kuroko-kun,” Riko said, smiling sweetly at him, the look in her eyes screaming murder.

Kuroko looked between Aomine and the team, and decided to leave. “I’m going to go shower before our date,” he said, pecking Aomine’s cheek and rushing off in the direction of the locker room.

Aomine’s eyes widened in panic. “Wait, fuck, Tetsu! Don’t leave me here! What the—” He took half a step in the direction that Tetsu had gone, only for someone to block his path. Aomine looked up and found himself eye-to-eye with Seirin’s number seven—Kiyoshi?—also giving him a deceptively kind expression with fire behind it.

“Why don’t you stay here and chat with us for a bit?” Kiyoshi said gently, but with a deadly threat in his words.

Nearby, Koganei looked at Mitobe with a mix of horror and surprise, and whispered just loud enough for Aomine to hear, “Mitobe, we can’t do that to him. It’s illegal.”

Aomine’s head snapped up to look at them with fear. “Um. Please don’t kill me?”

Koganei looked over and Aomine with confusion. “What? Kill you? No, no, that’s too nice for what Mitobe wants to do to you. You’re probably better off not knowing actually.” Mitobe nodded in silent agreement.

“So, Aomine-kun. We hear you made Kuroko-kun cry? On multiple occasions?” Riko said, tone casual.

“Yeah, Kuroko showed up at my door crying and telling me ‘Aomine-kun doesn’t want to be my friend anymore’, because this guy told him to get out of his life,” Kagami interjected from the sidelines.

“Did he now?” Hyuuga asked, cracking his knuckles.

“Uh, well. Technically yes, but—” Aomine started, only to be interrupted.

“...’But’?” Kiyoshi repeated. “Are you trying to imply that there’s a perfectly good excuse for abandoning Kuroko?”

Aomine waved his hands frantically. “No, no, that’s not what I meant, really—”

“Are you implying that it’s ever okay to do that kind of thing to Kuroko? Under any circumstances?” Hyuuga asked menacingly, taking a step closer.

Aomine took a step back. “No! I—I apologized, we made up, everything’s good, okay?”

“But... you’ve done this to him _twice_ now, haven’t you?” Riko asked, tilting her head. “Why should now be any different to you? You seem to have almost formed a habit of abandoning him.”  

“Yeah, well, I’m—I’m not gonna do it again, alright?” Aomine shouted, starting to get a little pissed.

“Do you know how many times he came to practice looking depressed?” Izuki chimed in. “Even before you cast him off.”

“Just because he thought he was going to lose you again,” Kagami added.

“So, why should we believe you when you say that you’re not going to do it again?” Izuki continued as if Kagami hadn’t interrupted.

Aomine glared. “ _You_ don’t have to believe me.” He averted his gaze. “Hell, _I_ didn’t even believe me for a while. But Tetsu does, and that’s all that matters,” he finished firmly, looking back up.

Koganei looked at Mitobe. “I think that’s also illegal,” he mused after a moment.

Aomine wanted to scream, but instead he just sort of stared with his face frozen somewhere between fear and anger, until he noticed Tetsu coming back out of the shower and sighed in relief. “Tetsu, your friends are insane, please save me, I think they’re gonna—” Suddenly he noticed what Tetsu was wearing. “—kill… me…” he drifted off absentmindedly, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth despite his recent near-death experience. Tetsu looked _really good_. He was wearing a pair of skintight black jeans and a blue v-neck, his hair still a bit damp and ruffled from trying to dry it with a towel.

“Please don’t kill him. He’s buying my food,” Kuroko said simply, walking over to link hands with Aomine. “Are you ready to go?” he asked, looking up at him with a tiny smile.

Aomine’s face broke out into a full-on grin and the menacing aura from the Seirin team faded into the background, because Tetsu was smiling at him and holding his hand, and he couldn’t be happier. “Yeah, let’s get outta here.”

Kuroko cast one more warning look at his team before walking out with Aomine, leading the way out of the gym.

Aomine may have been lulled into a false sense of security by Tetsu’s presence. So he _may_ have spared an appreciative glance at Tetsu’s ass while trailing behind him. And that was a mistake.

“OI! You better watch your eyes!” Hyuuga shouted menacingly.

“And watch you back, kid!” Riko added.

Aomine was done being terrorized. He turned and grinned smugly at them as he very deliberately pulled his hand from Tetsu’s grip and instead stuck it in Tetsu’s back pocket, squeezing his ass.

Kuroko jumped slightly, face going bright red because _they were in front of people, for God’s sake, Aomine-kun_. He glanced at his teammates and saw that they all looked about ready to murder, so he quickly closed the gym door behind them, hiding his blushing face in his hands.

“In my defense, these are some very tight jeans you’re wearing,” Aomine said, a shit-eating grin still plastered on his face, hand still in Kuroko’s pocket.

“That doesn’t mean that you should start touching me inappropriately in front of people. Especially people who are already mad at you. And would you get your hand out of my pocket? We are still in public!” His voice came out muffled because he still had his face in his hands.

“Oh, alright,” Aomine acquiesced… but not before giving Tetsu’s ass another squeeze. Then he took Tetsu’s hand again instead, pulling it away from his face and kissing his cute, blushing cheek before lacing their fingers together and continuing to walk, looking forward to their first date of many.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for all your amazing comments and favorites and kudos and everything!!! We really appreciate all the support <3 <3 <3
> 
> Here's a YouTube playlist of all the songs we used as the titles for this fic: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTsuSeU8Z0S8Ff85YDsTgcov74JX8rott


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